"Parrot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called by the Spaniards by a literal translation, "El guarda barranca," the gully-guard. The tucur is the owl; this name being apparently an abbreviation of the Nahuatl tecolotl. The bird called [c]anixt is the Spanish cotorra, a small species of parrot. (Guzman, Compendio ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... beggar!" he said, as if talking to himself. "Talk about the sailor's sick parrot. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... contented himself with nodding to the auctioneer; and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched voice broke ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... have thought from their deportment that they considered themselves the superiors instead of the slaves of the congregation. S. Cohn had been accustomed to a series of clergymen, who must needs be taught painfully to parrot 'Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, and all the Royal Family'—the indispensable atom of English in the service—so that he, the expert, had held his breath while they ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... giant perch, king, bonito, rhoombah, sweet-lips, parrot-fish, sea-mullet, and the sting-rays (brown and grey)—a harpoon and long line are used. When iron is not available a point is made of one of the black palms, the barb being strapped on with fibre, the binding being made impervious to water by a liberal coating of a pitch-like substance prepared ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... four in number, not counting the parrot, and all male. There was Pa Tuxton, an old feller with a beard and glasses; a fat uncle; a big brother, who worked in a bank and was dressed like Moses in all his glory; and a little brother with a snub nose, that cheeky you'd have been surprised. And ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the gales might send her, a furious swearing in Spanish caused them to shiver and look back. Were the dead speaking? Had some crazed sailor escaped, and was he gibbering from the roundtop? No: it was a parrot in the rigging, and he was ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... our old peach trees in their blossoming time I mentioned the paroquets which occasionally visited us but had their breeding-place some distance away. This bird was one of the two common parrots of the district, the other larger species being the Patagonian parrot, Conarus patagonus, the Loro barranquero or Cliff Parrot of the natives. In my early years this bird was common on the treeless pampas extending for hundreds of miles south of Buenos Ayres as well as in Patagonia, and bred in holes ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... a parrot! Sit down again. There he is at your elbow. Jocko is his name. He does my swearing for me. My grandson and a friend of his taught him that, and I have taught him a few other things besides. Good Jocko! Speak ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... thought it unwise to hurry matters. All during the afternoon they sat silent. Once Reera went to her cupboard and after thrusting her hand into the same drawer as before, touched the wolf and transformed it into a bird with gorgeous colored feathers. This bird was larger than a parrot and of a somewhat different form, but Ervic had never seen ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and Then. The house full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and domineered over and deaved the dove. Everything about the place ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... ornaments, which are alike, and which seem to be the usual hieroglyph of the crotalus jaw. These jaws are placed similarly with respect to each bird. In KINGSBOROUGH'S Mexican Antiquities, vol. I, Plate X, we find the parrot as the sign of TONATIHU, the sun, and in Plate XXV with NAOLIN, the sun. On a level with the nose of the principal figure are two symbols, one in front and one behind, each inclosing a St. Andrew's cross, and surmounted by what seems to be a flaming fire. It is probably ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... true to nature as were the figures delineated by the ignorant artist. In the space between the two glass doors which communicated with the garden was an apparatus of brass, which it is not necessary to describe further than to say that it served to support a parrot, which maintained itself on it with the air of gravity and circumspection peculiar to those animals, taking note of everything that went on. The hard and ironical expression of the parrot tribe, their green coats, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... the bargain habit has taken so powerful a hold that almost any sort of a bargain appeals to her. She is the owner of a fine parrot, yet not long ago she bought another, which had cost fifteen dollars, but was offered to her for ten. Its feathers were bedraggled and grimy, for it had followed its mistress about like a dog; it proved to be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... voice grated also on old Judge Bowman, who threw down his book and looked up over his bowed spectacles. He was a testy old fellow, with a Burgundy face and shaggy white hair, a chin and nose that met together like a parrot's, and an eye like a hawk. It was one of his principles to permit none of his intimates to speak ill of his friends in his hearing. Criticisms, therefore, by an outsider like Cobb were especially obnoxious ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... having found an equal flame, Unites, and both become the same, In different breasts together burn, Together both to ashes turn. But women now feel no such fire, And only know the gross desire. Their passions move in lower spheres, Where'er caprice or folly steers, A dog, a parrot, or an ape, Or some worse brute in human shape, Engross the fancies of the fair, The few soft moments they can spare, From visits to receive and pay, From scandal, politics, and play; From fans, and flounces, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... pets, and, next to a dog, quite the most interesting and intelligent. They are always cheerful: whistling, singing, and talking. The gray parrot is the best talker, and speaks much more distinctly than any other kind, but the Blue-fronted Amazon is more amusing and far better-tempered as a rule. These birds are very beautiful, with bright green plumage and touches ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... said. "Tears to me I'm fool enough already, settin' here in purple and fine linen, like the Queen o' Rome,—not that I don't like singin', but the contrary, quite the reverse; but with me it'd be a squawk and nothin' else; and fine feathers may make fine birds for what I care, more like a poll-parrot than a nightingale, and they say you must stick thorns into 'em to make 'em sing; but I guess it'll be t' other way, and my singin'll ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... neglected my peculiar duty of watching Jack, and was only made aware of my carelessness by hearing him shout, "Hallo! Bob, look alive!—I'm over!" when I would suddenly drop my eyes from the contemplation of the plumage of a parrot or the antics of a monkey, to behold my friend leaning over at an angle of "forty-five." To leap forward and catch him in my arms was the work of an instant. On each of these occasions, after setting him ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass, and full of very fine woods. I saw abundance of parrots, and fain would I have caught one, if possible, to have kept it to be tame, and taught it to speak to me. I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot; for I knocked it down with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home, but it was some years before I could make him speak. However, at last I taught him to call me by my name very familiarly: but the accident that followed, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... facsimile; reprint, offprint. mockery, mimicry; simulation, impersonation, personation; representation &c 554; semblance; copy &c 21; assimilation. paraphrase, parody, take-off, lampoon, caricature &c 21. plagiarism; forgery, counterfeit &c (falsehood) 544; celluloid. imitator, echo, cuckoo^, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. V. imitate, copy, mirror, reflect, reproduce, repeat; do like, echo, reecho, catch; transcribe; match, parallel. mock, take off, mimic, ape, simulate, impersonate, personate; act &c (drama) 599; represent &c 554; counterfeit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in order, were condemned at sight. Hundreds of death-sentences took about a minute per head. Children of seven, five and four years of age, were tried. A father was condemned for the son, and the son for the father. A dog was sentenced to death. A parrot was brought forward as a witness. Numbers of accused persons whose sentences could not be written ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Vandersee—would come!" panted Mrs. Goring. "What can I say to you, Captain? I understand, perfectly, your emotions. Yet I can only repeat what seems to you a parrot cry, that Miss Sheldon shall not suffer one jot at Leyden's hands, except the suffering that must come with disillusionment. I say it again, and I swear it by the God that shall kill me ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... are the summum bonum; and that she must not come into the dining-room, or even into the verandah; whither, nevertheless, she slips, in fear and trembling, every morning, to steal the little green parrot's breakfast out of his cage, or the baby's milk, or fruit off the side-board; in which case she makes her appearance suddenly and silently, sitting on the threshold like a distorted fiend; and begins scratching herself, looking at everything ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet I ought ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... believe, either a separate creation or a composite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discovered their particular function in nature but have observed them with some particularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches, both of which are easy ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... return I found them still slumbering, so I again lay down to think over our situation. Just at that moment I was attracted by the sight of a very small parrot, which Jack afterwards told me was called a paroquet. It was seated on a twig that overhung Peterkin's head, and I was speedily lost in admiration of its bright green plumage, which was mingled with other gay colours. While I looked I observed that the bird ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Would surely object to undertake At the same high pitch as an altercation. It's not for me, of course, to judge How much a deaf lady ought to begrudge; But half-a-guinea seems no great matter - Letting alone more rational patter - Only to hear a parrot chatter: Not to mention that feathered wit, The starling, who speaks when his tongue is slit; The pies and jays that utter words, And other Dicky Gossips of birds, That talk with as much good sense and decorum As many Beaks ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... dollars. This feature of the confederation scheme was eagerly seized upon as being a convenient club with which to strike it down. The cry was at once raised that the people of New Brunswick were asked to sell themselves to Canada for the sum of eighty cents a head, and this parrot-like cry was repeated with variations throughout the whole of the election campaign which followed in New Brunswick. It has often been found that a cry of this kind, which is absolutely meaningless, is more ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... is a big green and red parrot. She has a cage in the living room. Mother calls her 'the General' because she likes to give orders. When we sit down Polly calls out, 'Get busy! Get busy! Get busy!' If we are too busy and do not notice Polly she rolls over on her back ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... for to-night, if you please, and in case the housecleaning man gets all the ice cream up from under the sitting-room matting, and makes a snowball of it for the poll parrot to play horse with, I'll tell you next about Bully and Bawly going to ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... green-colored South American parrot who was more than one hundred years old. This aged fellow could speak in a real language which was known to have been used by a tribe of South American Indians who, it is supposed, petted and taught him when he was young. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... fed with boiled barley, and looked in first-rate condition. Indeed, all the animals seemed as happy and well-cared for as my host's scores upon scores of pet birds. Birds, however, are capricious, and nothing would induce a beautiful green parrot to cry, "Vive la France" in my presence. After an animated breakfast—thoroughly French breakfast, the best of everything cooked and served in the best possible manner—we took leave, and my young friend drove me back to Vitry to call ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... her head with this treasonable stuff! But we'll see, we'll see if we can't crowd all such stuff out with livelier things when we have those fine doings at the Province House Sir William is talking of. Her principles! The little parrot!" ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... complaining, so they fished up her pet gold-fish out of the aquarium on her window-sill, and fried them on the atelier stove, and put them back in the window on a little plate all garnished with carrots. She swore vengeance and called in the police, but to no avail. One day they fished up the parrot in its cage, and the green bird that screamed and squawked continually met a speedy and painless death and went off to the taxidermist. Then the cage was lowered in its place with the door left ajar, and the old woman ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... in 1747, added "a List of all the Dramatic Authors, with some Account of their Lives," &c., describes a curious occurrence at the Theatre Royal in 1693. A comedy entitled "The Wary Widow, or Sir Noisy Parrot," written by one Higden, and now a very scarce book, had been produced; but on the first representation, "the author had contrived so much drinking of punch in the play that the actors almost all got drunk, and were unable to get ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... myself and my men on a piece of waste ground outside the town, and all Orte flocked out there as the sun went down, shouting and cheering for me as though Pipistrello were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus—the giddiest-pated fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison—the same people that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... PARROT: one brought up in a respectable family, and that has not been taught naughty words or bigoted expressions, preferred.—Apply by letter, stating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... her affections had been a green parrot, which, having been so imprudent as to eat some parsley, fell a victim to frightful colics. An indigestion, caused by sweet biscuits, had taken from Madame de la Grenouillere a pug-dog of the most brilliant promise. A third favorite, an ape of a ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... what to say next when the door opened. Jane had heard the commotion, and there she stood in her sleeping garments and cap, a kimono floating behind her. In one hand was her candle, in the other the only ornament she possessed—a stuffed parrot! ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... a bag which had, on one side of it, worked in worsted, a green parrot on a stand. A green parrot on a stand was the means by which to identify ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... is playing in the theatre. On Christmas Day the padrone came in with the key of his box, and would we care to see the drama? The theatre was small, a mere nothing, in fact; a mere affair of peasants, you understand; and the Signor Di Paoli spread his hands and put his head on one side, parrot-wise; but we might find a little diversion—un peu de divertiment. With this he handed ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... know I deal in the works of royal authors, though I have never admired any of their own buildings, not excepting King Solomon's temple. Stanley(126) and Edmondson in Hungary! What carried them thither? The chase of mines too? The first, perhaps, waddled thither obliquely, as a parrot would have done ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... am quite an old man, my memory isn't so good any more. But whenever I am in doubt and have to hesitate and think, I always ask Polynesia, the parrot. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... over the wet thwarts, and I find myself in the stern sheets of the boat. A young Dutchman follows with stolid suddenness. Two Italian gentlemen, weeping, refuse to descend more than half-way, climb back, and are carried on to Haifa. A German lady with a parrot in a cage comes next, and her anxiety for the parrot makes her forget to be afraid. Then comes a little Polish lady, evidently a bride; she shuts her eyes tight and drops into the boat, pale, silent, resolved that she will not scream: her husband follows, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report, before the whole band moves. With kindred species the cranes contract real friendship; and in captivity there is no bird, save the also sociable and highly intelligent parrot, which enters into such real friendship with man. "It sees in man, not a master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it," Brehm concludes from a wide personal experience. The crane is in continual activity from early in the morning till late in the night; but it gives a few hours only in the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... and telling examination is the college teacher's perennial problem. The less he teaches and insists on facts and details, the greater his quandary. A majority of students incline to parrot what they have heard, to the dismay of the teacher who wants them to make the subject their own. Hence tests calling the memory only into play do not satisfy the true teacher or the thoughtful student. At the least there should ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the matter with you, Sol?" asked Mr. Phinney. "You're as glum as a tongue-tied parrot. Ain't you satisfied with the way I'm doin' your movin'? The white horse can go back ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Billie Bennett "around," scheming, blundering and hoping, so does the parrot faced young man ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... be quite alone, was pleased at finding herself surrounded by a number of pretty girls, all anxious to wait on her, whilst a brilliantly-coloured parrot said the most ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... auction at his insurance office, there she was, and, sure enough, that afternoon she landed in our side yard with Bailey's poll-parrot and a circular saw. It amused me. She wanted to use that saw as a dinner-gong, but it was cracked, and so she has turned it into a griddle for muffins. Bailey had taught the parrot to swear so that I was afraid it'd demoralize Charley, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... within. He grasped that A. V. stood for Alfred Vernon, the girl's cousin, a young man recently from England. . . . Yes, A. V. had occasionally gone into the jungle with a light rifle. Sometimes he had brought in a wild duck, or a grey marhatta hare; once a black-horned gazelle, but usually a parrot, a peacock or a jay. . . . Yes, sometimes he had been gone for hours. . . . Yes, she had told him about the evil and also the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... and for one dreadful moment I was sure I couldn't begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves, Diana. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so far away. I just felt like a parrot. It's providential that I practised those recitations so often up in the garret, or I'd never have been able to get through. Did I ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... inverted chopping-bowl and covered with tough skin instead of feathers. It had four legs—much like the legs of a stork, only double the number—and its head was shaped a good deal like that of a poll parrot, with a beak that curved downward in front and upward at the edges, and was half bill and half mouth. But to call it a bird was out of the question, because it had no feathers whatever except a crest of wavy plumes of a scarlet color on the very top of its head. ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a prop!' said Gobind with a grim chuckle. 'God has given me eighty years, and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day and as a favour ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... many women in the London parks and shopping district so perverted as to be on friendly terms with dogs, and in their homes, with cats and cockatoos, and who had no affection for children—women who could try to understand the screams of a parrot, the barking of a dog, but who would not tolerate the lovely patois of the nursery. Jane, the salvation of society depends on good mothers, and if women decline to be mothers at all, it is a shameful and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in front of the three-story apartment where her parents lived. John shifted clumsily from one foot to the other, not knowing how to make a graceful adieu. The maiden came to his rescue with a parrot-like imitation of Mrs. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... book, both in its description of the country and inhabitants of Central Asia, and in its connection with the remarkable event of our world—the Flood. Mount Ararat, which was ascended by M. Parrot, must ever possess to the Biblical reader most intense interest, as the resting place of the ark after ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... and a dog. He was a trusty servant to me many years. I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company. I only wanted him to talk to me, but that he could not do. Later, I managed to catch a parrot, which did much to cheer my loneliness. I taught him to speak, and it would have done your heart good to have heard the pitying tones in which he used to say, "Robin—poor ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a beautiful wife, whom he loved so dearly, that he could scarcely allow her to be out of his sight. One day, some urgent affairs obliging him to go from home, he went to a place where all sorts of birds were sold, and bought a parrot, which not only spoke well, but could also give an account of every thing that was done in its presence. He brought it in a cage to his house, desired his wife to put it in his chamber, and take care of it during his absence, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... and other birds of prey are met with; and partridges, duck, teal, guinea-fowl, sand-grouse, curlews, woodcock, snipe, pigeons, thrushes and swallows are very plentiful. A fine variety of ostrich is commonly found. Among the birds prized for their plumage are the marabout, crane, heron, blacks bird, parrot, jay and humming-birds of extraordinary brilliance, Among insects the most numerous and useful is the bee, honey everywhere constituting an important part of the food of the inhabitants. Of an opposite class is the locust. Serpents are not numerous, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his turn with a most formidable roll of papers. The other individual in the room was a Hungarian, who moved about, sat down, and rose up, with the most restless impatience, twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively conversation with a caged parrot which stood ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... for fourteen days, deplores the loss of her husband and the shapeless mass of ruin and rubbish she once called her happy home; whilst her boys bring in green stuff from the surburban gardens, and a middle-aged neighbour stalks along with his pet parrot, the bird all the while amusing himself with elaborate imitations of the growl of the mitrailleuse and the hissing of shells ending with terrific ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... thicket my heart's bird!' Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard; Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie, Jarred horrid notes, the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away; For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... animals," remarks Louis Robinson (art. "Ticklishness," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), "local titillation of the skin, though in parts remote from the reproductive organs, plainly acts indirectly upon them as a stimulus. Thus, Harvey records that, by stroking the back of a favorite parrot (which he had possessed for years and supposed to be a male), he not only gave the bird gratification,—which was the sole intention of the illustrious physiologist,—but also caused it to reveal its sex by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... against the doorpost, resting his weary wig as near the shoe-buckles of the guardian genius of his trade and shop as he could. But no fierce idol with a mouth from ear to ear, and a murderous visage made of parrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of its savage votaries, than was the Midshipman to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of a conversation going on between a little old man with a pair of thick horn rimmed spectacles and a sailor who had a dead parrot and a cat in ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... one way into this room when those robberies were committed, and the parrot was the only living thing in the house that was small enough to go through that pipe and intelligent enough to do ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... a centered cross of three equal bands - the vertical part is yellow (hoist side), black, and white and the horizontal part is yellow (top), black, and white; superimposed in the center of the cross is a red disk bearing a sisserou parrot encircled by 10 green, five-pointed stars edged in yellow; the 10 stars represent ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... cage hanging beside one of the first-floor windows, jestingly exclaimed: "Yes, yes, Tata, make a good noise, show that you are pleased, my dear. Everybody in the house must be pleased now." Then, turning towards Pierre, she added gaily: "You know Tata, don't you? What! No? Why, Tata is my uncle's parrot. I gave her to him last spring; he's very fond of her, and lets her help herself out of his plate. And he himself attends to her, puts her out and takes her in, and keeps her in his dining-room, for fear lest she should take cold, as that is the only room ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... cheerfully. "I took the milk from two little cats what git stuffed with milk every morning and night. The doughnut had jest been stuck in a parrot's cage. He hedn't tetched it. My! he swore fierce! I'd ruther steal, anyway, than let Iry ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... grew and swiftly overspread all things. The leaden silence began to be pierced here and there by the barking of a dog, the crowing of a cock, the scolding of a parrot. Somewhere, either in the compound or close to it, some one began to whistle—a soft, tentative whistle, like a young blackbird trying ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Prince rapped out the words in tones of unusual vigour, a little, stout, old gentleman, opening a door behind Gotthold, received them fairly in the face. With his parrot's beak for a nose, his pursed mouth, his little goggling eyes, he was the picture of formality; and in ordinary circumstances, strutting behind the drum of his corporation, he impressed the beholder with a certain air of frozen dignity ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her was cleared now. People were beginning to consider their next coup. The voice of the croupier, with his parrot-like cry, travelled down ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... No. 18 there was a letter from Nellie R. asking what to do for her parrot. In Holden's book on birds I found if you feed your bird with too rich food, it causes a skin disease and an itching sensation which the bird tries to relieve by pulling out its feathers. The only remedy is to feed it on raw or boiled carrots, or ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looked at a fellah like me,—he said,—but I come pretty near tryin'. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn't have known what to have done with her. Can't marry a woman now-a-days till you're so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she says, and so long-sighted you can't see what she looks like nearer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Fuegian parrot, or paroquet, is known to naturalists as Psittacus Imaragdinus,—the humming-bird as Melisuga Kingii. It was long believed that neither parrots nor humming-birds existed in Tierra del Fuego; Buffon, with his usual incorrectness, alleging that the specimens brought from it were taken elsewhere; ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... it?" asked the Minor Poet. "Why, when we meet together, must we chatter like a mob of sparrows? Why must every assembly to be successful sound like the parrot-house of a ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... when legal divorce was too horrible to contemplate they made very pretty festivals of betrothing little children who could not understand the ceremony or even parrot the pledge. Who indeed can understand the pledge before its meaning ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to close this chapter; but finding that, as the parrot, which other while useth the form of a man's voice, yet being beaten and chaffed, returneth to his own natural voice, so some of our opposites, who have been but erst prating somewhat of the language of Canaan against us, finding themselves pressed and perplexed in such ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Mr. ASQUITH received deputations on the Eight Hours' Question last Friday. The chief speakers were Mr. PARROT and Mr. ONIONS. Mr. G. observed that in all his vast experience, frequently as he had tasted a savoury dish of rabbit and onions, yet the combination of Parrot with Onions was something really novel. Perhaps Mr. PARROT would be useful at any bye-election, and would give them the state ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... its body, varied in length and thickness—the longest being about twenty-four feet, and the shortest about eight. The under sides of these arms were supplied with innumerable suckers, while from the body there projected a horny beak, like the beak of a parrot. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... engaged Schaunard to sing to his parrot till it dies, but after three days Schaunard becomes so heartily sick of his task, that he poisons ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... run-ashore late, Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the master-at-arms. "In brig there, I say!"—They dally no more; Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, Pinion and cripple and hustle ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... advance his great ideas by assuming the place of the Universities in training public opinion, and the place of the Church in controlling it. He might as well strive to make the horse into the lion, the mule into the unicorn, a parrot into the soaring eagle! Any man who is written up into a place can be written down out of it. Our friend will learn this too late—probably about the time that we, in England, are adopting, with enthusiasm, his present error. Ah, my dear Orange, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... road; then to the strains of a bamboo fiddle, bamboo flute, bamboo drum, the melodrama was begun. The hero pranced into the open square to the tune of a minor dirge, not knowing a single sentence of his part; the prompter, kneeling down before a flaring candle, told him what to say; he repeated in parrot-like fashion, and then pranced off the square to slow dirge-like music. Now the heroine minced in from the opposite corner to slow music with her satin train sweeping in the dust; though carefully raised when she crossed the sacred precincts ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... "missionary" name "Ebenezer," did not survive the test of usage. Miss Gordon Cumming gives an interesting list of Fijian names translated into English. For women they were such as Spray of the Coral Reef, Queen of Parrot's Land, Queen of Strangers, Smooth Water, Wife of the Morning Star, Mother of Her Grandchildren, Ten Whale's Teeth, Mother of Cockroaches, Lady Nettle, Drinker of Blood, Waited For, Rose of Rewa, Lady Thakombau, Lady Flag, etc. The men's names were such as The Stone (eternal) God, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... dressed! He wore tight red trousers, a red and blue turban on his head, and a tight jeweled tunic, covered with pearl buttons. His sash was green, dotted with purple spots. He had purple parrot feathers at his waist ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... absorbed comprehensive air quite unlike the manner of a child. Dots of heads, curious faces, peering and starting eyes, met my vision. I heard sharp talk in German, and a rider flung his arm, as if he wished to crash the universe, and flew off. The margravine seemed to me more an implacable parrot than a noble lady. I thought to myself: This is my father, and I am not overjoyed or grateful. In the same way, I felt that the daylight was bronze, and I did not wonder at it: nay, I reasoned on the probability of a composition of sun and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that Noah's ark that we saw anchored in the creek this morning, Roy," came a shrill voice from the deck of the yacht. "I saw half a dozen women going aboard her this afternoon laden with boxes and trunks—everything but the parrot and the monkey. It looked as though they meant to spend the ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... to the diet of bush vermln, so often extolled in these colonies, and although carefully eschewing all parrot pies, red-bill ragouts, black swans, kangaroo rats, porcupines, and such vaunted nastinesses, we strongly contend for the excellence of "kangaroo steamer," as a most savory and appetizing dish. We cannot reproach it with a fault, save its tendency to lead one to excess; the only difficulty is to ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... egg," the Easy Chair retorted, "but there is not the same winning appeal in the baldness of the superannuated bird which has evolved from it—eagle or nightingale, parrot or ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... attacks, he was obliged to flee and take sanctuary at Westminster, where he died. His most entertaining pieces are "Speke Parrot," "Phyllyt Sparrowe," and "Elynour Rummynge." In the first a fair lady laments the death of her bird, killed by "those vylanous false cattes." She sings a "requiescat" for the soul of her dear bird, and recounts ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... antagonism, the fair, gentle, intellectual peasant boy adored the dark, fiery, imperious young patrician who loved, petted, and patronized him only as if he had been a wonderfully learned pig or very accomplished parrot! Bee knew this; but the pure love of her sweet spirit was incapable of jealousy, and when she saw that Ishmael loved Claudia best, she herself saw reason in that for esteeming her cousin higher than she had ever done ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... admit the just claims of the "upper classes." They convinced themselves that without them crops would cease to grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their way to market, barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over the whole garden of civilization. And, so brainless is the parrot public, they have succeeded in creating a very widespread conviction that their own high opinion of their services is not too high, and that some dire calamity would come if they were swept from between producer and consumer! True, thieves are found only where there is property; ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Greek history (perhaps in all history)—one met a cabman beaten again and again for calling his horse "Cotso" (diminutive of "Constantine"), or a woman dragged to the police-station because her parrot was heard whistling the Constantine March. Volumes would be needed to record the petty persecutions which arose from {212} the use of that popular name: suffice it to say that prudent parents refrained from giving it ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... two jumps, nearly dashing my brains out against the slide in my haste, and stared stupidly about me for a moment, being more than half-stunned. Then, as I pulled myself together, I heard Chips repeating, parrot-wise: ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... of an English sparrow, of a brick or Indian red color, for the most part, the peculiarity of its parrot-like beak is ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... del V—-e has just sent me a beautiful bird with the most gorgeous plumage of the brightest scarlet and blue. It is called a huacamaya, and is of the parrot species, but three times as large, being about two feet from the beak to the tip of the tail. It is a superb creature but very wicked, gnawing not only its own pole, but all the doors, and committing ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the nearest passenger—an obese travelling man who mopped a very red face,—the boy timidly held a Gloire de Dijon rose up to him and recited with parrot-like glibness: ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... spite of my reluctance, announced the first performance for August 6. That year it was fearfully hot in Paris. I believe that Perrin, who could not tame me alive, had, without really any bad intention, but by pure autocracy, the desire to tame me dead. Doctor Parrot went to see him, and told him that my state of weakness was such that it would be positively dangerous for me to act during the trying heat. Perrin would hear nothing of it. Then, furious at the obstinacy of this intellectual bourgeois, I swore I would play ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... understood before words, and vowel sounds before consonants, so that if the vowel sounds alone are given of a word which the child understands (thirteen months), it will understand as well as if the word were fully spoken. Many children before they are six months old will repeat words parrot-like by mere imitation, without attaching to them any meaning. But this "echo-speaking" never takes place before the first understanding of certain other words is shown—never, e.g., earlier than the fourth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... it was the only object that was visible. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the light, and we found that a pair of brown legs were moving slowly along the floor past our spyhole. A body, gorgeously decorated in mats of green and crimson parrot feathers, followed the legs, and then came a head that was hidden behind a mask of sennet daubed thickly with coral lime and ochre till ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... much talking on the science and art of teaching. But it must be confessed that, while this is desirable and in fact indispensable, much of it may be little more than a mere whitewash; much of it is simply parrot-like imitation; much of it is only "words, words, words." Far be it from me to underestimate the value of this professional and pedagogical phase of the teacher's equipment. Nevertheless, when all is said and duly considered, it is personality ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... parrot in our party nearly frightened the lives out of some very inquisitive and superstitious Indians and French half-breeds. They had stopped their ox-carts one day at the same spot where we, coming in the opposite direction, ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... as a parrot in your fez and cabaja, and it does my heart good to see the little black shadow turned into a rainbow," said Uncle Alec, surveying the bright figure before him with ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... her degradation as he had met it on that one night she never thought of but with repentance. Yet to her ignorance, to her, rising towards purity now, yet ever steeped in the coarsest knowledge, it seemed that the thing called love could hardly utter itself save by some threadbare blandishment, or parrot combination of words, used each night by a hundred women of the town. Cuckoo knew no language of love that was not, so to say, bad language, inasmuch as it was used by those whom she hated. And hitherto she had been content to keep her ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that in the Boscawen Room at the Arms, some of the jolly fellows of Newcome had a club, of which Parrot the auctioneer, Tom Potts the talented reporter, now editor of the Independent, Vidler the apothecary, and other ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... laid in a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height of several feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the narrow vertical slits, which in ages past had served as vantage point for a vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, hung a parrot cage. "Coco" was ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... absolutely appalling; yet his lips unclosed as I worked past him, and he exclaimed in a harsh, croaking voice, 'One eye!' Thereupon two or three queer people poked their heads out of the coach window. There was one old woman with false teeth, in an unpleasant state of decay, and a voice like a parrot. 'One eye!' she shrieked, as she gazed on me with an eye as stony as the coachman. A pale, simpering miss smirked in my face, and cried, 'One eye!' and a military gentleman, with a ghastly frown, hissed forth the same words. I should have scrutinized the queer coach and the queer people ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... was that the worthy clergyman came to discover that to put three grown-up women into the same house, and to expect them to live together in peace and amity, is about as foolhardy an experiment as to shut up a bulldog, a parrot, and a tom-cat in a cupboard, and expect them to behave like so ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... did, but when he got to the front of the house and saw how neat the flower-beds were with red geraniums, and the windows all bright and speckless with muslin blinds and brass rods, and a green parrot in a cage in the porch, and the doorstep newly whited, lying clean and untrodden in the sunshine, he stood still and thought of his boots and how dusty the roads were, and wished he had not gone into the farmyard after eggs before starting that morning. As he stood there in anxious ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... morning to the sound of a fleet unloading cargoes of wrought-iron, and of the hard swearing of all nations of seafaring men. The whole day long the tumult followed us, and seemed to culminate at last in the screams of a parrot, who thought it fine to cry, "Piove! piove! piove!"—"It rains! it rains! it rains!"—and had, no doubt, a secret interest in some umbrella-shop. This unprincipled bird dwelt somewhere in the neighborhood of the street where you see the awful tablet in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... one directed conspicuously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, medival gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grandmother, and warmed up with the best of old India ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... for the Continent depends, in some measure, on the incontinent. I have two country invitations at home, and don't know what to say or do. In the mean time, I have bought a macaw and a parrot, and have got up my books; and I box and fence daily, and go out ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... every class, leisured and working women, pretty and plain, good and bad, who are hungering and thirsting for love, for a man to take care of them, for the right to wifehood and the thrice blessed right to motherhood. In the Press the parrot cry of men echoes ceaselessly: 'Women shouldn't meddle in politics; women shouldn't do this or that—let them mind their homes and their children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... a parrot!' he said, laughing loudly. 'Wouldn't it be fun if you was a parrot. I wish ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... season is vocal, not only with the fine melody of the true songsters, but with hoarse cawings, piercing cries, shrill duets, noisy choruses, drummings, boomings, trills, wood-tappings—every sound with which different species express the glad impulse; and birds like the parrot that only exert their powerful voices in screamings—because "they can do no other"—then scream their loudest. When courtship begins it has in many cases the effect of increasing the beauty of the performance, giving added sweetness, verve, and brilliance to ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and looking on. This has gratified the old gentleman extremely; he hails it as an auspicious omen of the revival of falconry, and does not despair but the time will come when it will be again the pride of a fine lady to carry about a noble falcon, in preference to a parrot or ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... of the mask is an eagle plume with parrot plumes; an eagle plume is at each side, and one at the bottom of the mask. The hair around the head and face is red like fire, and when it moves and shakes people cannot look closely at the mask. It is not intended that they should observe closely, else they would know ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... and put him to death. After this he conducted the damsel to his palace, and constantly lamented his precipitancy in having killed her father.—This tale seems to have been taken from the Persian "Tuti Nama," or Parrot-book, composed by Nahkshabi about the year 1306;[FN486] it occurs in the 51st Night of the India Office MS. 2573, under the title of "Story of the Daughter of the Vazir Khassa, and how she found safety through the blessing of her piety:" ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the turtle filled with her voice the plain. There sang the nightingale, whose chant arouses the sleeper, and the merle with his note like the voice of man and the cushat and the ring-dove, whilst the parrot with its eloquent tongue answered the twain. The valley pleased them and they ate of its fruits and drank of its waters, after which they sat under the shadow of its trees till drowsiness overcame them and they slept, glory be to Him who sleepeth not! As they lay ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton |
