"Petal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no place within their lowly hearts—never were their flowers lifted up—their glances were ever bent in sweet humility towards the green sod from which they had sprung, and, as I gazed upon them, I saw that on each lovely petal ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... seal-ring, with its quartered bearings,—all intensely there, and there in beauty of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt, every rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, and flash from it, beneath that ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... standing in the middle of the floor, its glass was shattered, and out of each of its eight panels streamed a great flame six or seven feet high, like the petal of an enormous flower. Facing these flames stood Miss Ford and Mr. Tovey, hand in hand, each singing a different song very earnestly. Lady Arabel had found somewhere a patent fire extinguisher, and was putting on her glasses in ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... . the miracle happened. Michael, with the hand that had just taken hers, stroked a petal of this prized vegetable, with no thought in his mind stronger than the thoughts that had been indigenous there since Christmas. As his finger first touched the rim of the town-bred petals, undersized yet not quite lacking in "rose-quality," he had ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... than ever above her head bloomed that "blue rose" she longed to pluck. Would she ever reach it after all her striving, even to gather one poor leaf, one withered petal? The path which led to it was very hard to climb, and below the breakers boiled. Would it, after all, be her fate to fall, down into that gulf of which the sorrowful waters could bring neither ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... White, 2 to 3 in. across, globular, depressed, deliciously fragrant, solitary at ends of branches. Calyx of 3 petal-like, spreading sepals. Corolla of 6 to 12 concave rounded petals in rows; stamens very numerous, short, with long anthers; carpels also numerous, and borne on the thick, green, elongated receptacle. Trunk: 4 to 70 ft. high. Leaves: Enfolded in the bud ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Dutch botanists, because two of them—commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom—published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in "Species Plantarum." Soon after noon, the day-flower's petals roll ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... unimaginative man. Her eyes seemed to warm, and she often looked flushed and softly appealing. He began to note vaguely that her dresses were better, and oftener changed, than they had been at Mallowe. A more observant man might have been touched by the suggestion that she was unfolding petal by petal like a flower, and that each carefully chosen costume was a new petal. He did not in the least suspect the reverent eagerness of her care of herself as an object hoping to render itself worthy of his qualities ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... simply parted on a broad forehead, and was gathered in heavy masses low on the neck. Her lips were full and red, and, when parted, exhibited teeth of dazzling whiteness, while her complexion, which was very dark, was yet clear and pure as the hue of the magnolia's petal. But that face was pale, very pale, almost as colorless as that of the quiet sleeper at its side, and upon it rested an expression of love unutterable, mingled with ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... she herself be allowed to tell Mr. Perkins. She felt better already in her conscience, she declared, and even sang as she set about rearranging her roses. Each one of these she named with a girl's name, Johnnie assisting; and the two were able, by the curl of a petal, or the number of leaves on a stem, or some other tiny sign, to tell Cora from Alice, and Elaine from Blanchefleur, and the Princess Mary from Buddir al Buddoor, as well as to recognize Rebecca, and Julia, and ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... felt she could not fly another yard, she saw a single cowslip under her claws. In an instant she dropped to the ground, and at the same moment Abdullah seized her tail. But Fantosina put forth her beak as far as it would go and just succeeded in touching the pale yellow petal of the one cowslip which ...
— The Bountiful Lady - or, How Mary was changed from a very Miserable Little Girl - to a very Happy One • Thomas Cobb
... Tulip from Batavia's shore; The thrifty Fleming for my beauty rare Pays a king's ransom, when that I am fair, And tall, and straight, and pure my petal's core. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... pandemonium of composite noises and composite smells was offset by the splendid remnants of Imperial Delhi:—the Pearl Mosque, a dream in marble, dazzling against the blue: inlaid columns of the Dewan-i-Khas—every leaf wrought in jade or malachite, every petal a precious stone; swelling domes and rose-pink minarets of the Jumna Musjid rising superbly from a network of narrow streets and shabby toppling houses. For, in India, the sordid and stately rub shoulders ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... again—began to wonder just how much his daily visits to Denny's place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not wait for any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, her lips beginning to curl again, petal-like, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... little Emma McChesney was sleeping, by a curious coincidence, as she had been when Emma arrived, so that she could not have the satisfaction of a last pressure of the lips against the rose-petal cheek. She had to content herself with listening close to the door in the vain hope of catching a last ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... scented hearts of flowers Are whispered through me; till I cry aloud. Alas! how grey and scentless is the bloom Of mortal life! This — this alone I fear, That from yon twinkling mirror of delight The unreal flowers may fade; that with the breath Of the fiery flying Dragon they will fall Petal by petal, slowly, yet too soon, Into the world's green sepulchre. Alas! My little friends, my lovers, we must part, And, like some uncompanioned pine that stands, Last of the legions on the southern slopes, I too shall stand alone, and hungry winds Shall gnaw the lute-strings ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... spake a petal detached itself from the emaciated lily, and she pressed her hand to her brow with a responsive cry ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... snowfields. From the villages the people came out to meet him, and here and there from some castle of a greater importance a chieftain would ride out with his bodyguard, gay in velvets, and silks from Bokhara and chogas of gold kinkob, and offer to him gold dust twisted up in the petal of a flower, which he touched and remitted. He was escorted to polo-grounds and sat for hours witnessing sports and trials of skill, and at night to the music of kettledrums and pipes men and boys danced interminably before him. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... rose or white, Petal by petal, fall On that stretch of mud and sand that lies By the hideous prison-wall, To tell the men who tramp the yard That God's ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... compelled to note in passing that the beauty of these delicate and minute objects must not be considered an end—a purpose—in nature. It is not so. The form is what it is because it must be so to serve the end for which the egg is formed. There is not a superfluous spine, not a useless petal in the floral egg, not an unneeded line of chasing in the decorated shell. It is shaped beautifully because its shape is needed. In short, it is Nature's method; the identification of beauty and use. But to resume. We may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... The red martagon grows abundantly on our plains; the dog's tooth violet, Erythronium, with its spotted leaves and bending yellow blossom, delicately dashed with crimson spots within, and marked with fine purple lines on the outer part of the petal, proves a great attraction in our woods, where these plants increase: they form a beautiful bed; the leaves come up singly, one from each separate tuber. There are two varieties of this flower, the pale yellow, with neither spots nor lines, and the deep yellow with both; the anthers of this last ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... small beetles, finely broken up;* its head was covered with yellow pollen, out of a flower resembling the mallow, which is frequently resorted to by small beetles during the heat of the day, when the petal closing over them they are extracted, with some difficulty, by the bird. The other specimen was a brown grain-feeding kind; it invariably rested on the ground, where in its habits, head erect, tail down, and short, sudden run, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... show its shelving teeth that I could have guessed at what it was suffering. But gradually I apprehended what was being done. Its captor was squeezing its throat. I saw what I had never seen before, and have never seen since, I saw its tongue like a pale pink petal of a flower dart out as the pressure drove it. Revolting sight as that would have been to me, witnessed in the world, here, in this dark wood, in this outland presence, it was nothing but curious. Now, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... more confidently infer that protection is here aimed at, because the seeds of several species in this same genus are protected in other ways;* namely, by the swelling and closure of the calyx, or by the persistence and bending down of the standard-petal, etc. But the most curious instance is that of T. globosum, in which the upper flowers are sterile, as in T. subterraneum, but are here developed into large brushes of hairs which envelop and protect the seed-bearing flowers. Nevertheless, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... classifies. The perfumes gathered by the tendrils of violet and rose, in their divine desire for expression, are found in petroleum. Aye, the colors and all the delicate tints of petal, of stamen and of pistil, are in this substance stored in the dark recesses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... resembles that of America in most particulars. It is there often placed in alternate rows with rice, and after the rice-harvest is over puts forth a beautiful yellow flower with a crimson eye in each petal; this is succeeded by a green pod filled with a white pulp, which as it ripens turns brown, and then separates into several divisions containing the cotton. A luxuriant field, says Forbes in his "Oriental Memoirs," "exhibits at the same time the expanding blossom, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly—they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... collection he chose a design representing a cluster of flowers emanating spindle-like, from a slender stalk. Taking it to a jeweler, he sketched a border to enclose this bouquet in an oval frame, and informed the amazed lapidary that every petal and every leaf was to be designed with jewels and mounted on the scales of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... my heart slipped into you. It seems, also, that you are the moon And that I am at the top of a tree. If I had wings I would spread them as far as you, Dear bud, that will not open Though the kisses of the holy bird knock at your petal door. ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... notwithstanding, there must be some rules to the game or you don't get your work of art. When those modern wizards of the halls set themselves to a piece of bizarre juggling, say, with a string of pearls, a dumb-bell and a rose-petal, they do toss and catch—don't merely let everything just drop. Mr. STEPHENS will know what I mean without caring overmuch. There's something in it all the same. Anyway, there really are in The Demi-Gods delicate shy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... its Heavenly origin, a quite remarkable power resides in it. If a maiden, whose mind harbours a doubt, pulls off, one by one, the white petals of the flower-star, whispering meanwhile a certain sentence at the fall of the last little petal, she is quite sure of what ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to the gods, the divine Vishnu, ardent in the work, sought a birth-place among men. Dividing himself into four parts, he whose eyes resemble the lotus and the pulasa, the lotus petal-eyed, chose for his father Dasaratha the sovereign of men. The divine sages then with the Gandharvas, the Rudras, and the (different sorts of) Apsaras, in the most excellent strains, praised the destroyer of Madhu, (saying) "Root up Ravana, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... solitude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew on leaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-off city some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside and Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the fair basket-maker, an ornament for ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... remember which continually would assuredly drive her mad. But matters now were changed. Day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, a rose had been unfolding itself at Collingswood, and with every opening petal had grown more and more precious to the blind man, until more than one crone foretold the end; and Grace Atherton, grown fonder of gossip than she was wont to be, listened to the tale, and watched, and wondered, and wept, and still caressed and loved the bright, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... shapely heads, looking like cherubim drunk with light, floating in spheres of harmony and beauty, I would think: "Ah, what a garden, what flowers to gather, to breathe! Ah! Marguerites, Marguerites! What will your last petal say to him who plucks it? A little, a little, but not all. That is the moral of the world, that is the end of your smiles. It is over this terrible abyss that you are walking in your spangled gauze; it is on this hideous reality you run like ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... loveliness into that of the Court and has succeeded in increasing both. "The Flower Girl" appears in outer niches of the attic cloister of the court bearing her name, the Court of Flowers. A light garlanded mantle falls like a petal from her shoulders, the floating edge following the line of the nymph's divided hair, so that the maiden seems more like a flower itself than a flowerbearer. However, she has the sculptural solidity necessary for her location and resembles not some frail, wind-blown ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... pentapod; but gradually the tips of the arms bend outward as the arms diverge more and more, and when fully expanded the crown has the appearance of a lily of the L. martagon type, in which each petal is curved upon itself, the pinnules of the arms spreading laterally more and more, as the crown is more fully open. I have not been able to detect any motion in the stem traceable to contraction, though there is no stiffness in its bearing. When ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... garlands; they wreathed the Muses, the Seasons, and their speech, so the women wore wreaths in their hair, and Miss Betty's that night was of marguerites. "Read your fortune in them all," whispered Tom's heart, "and of whomsoever you wish to learn, every petal will say 'He loves you; none declare, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... an apple blossom that had fallen into her lap. The fingers that held the petal tingled, and a flush ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... figured and described; we have selected the most essential parts of his generic character, and adopted his specific description: there is one point, however, in which we differ from him; the part which he regards as the fifth Petal, we are inclined to consider rather as that indescribable something, called by LINNAEUS the Nectary, it is indeed of little moment whether we call it a Petal or a Nectary, but there are several reasons why, strictly speaking, we cannot regard it as a Petal: in general ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... them. They electrify the atmosphere. I see this girl so distinctly somehow: little, white thing; big, gloomy eyes like storms in deep woods, and thin eyelids—you know, that transparent, flower-petal kind, where you fancy you see the iris looking through, like spirit eyes, always awake while the body's eyes sleep; and—and lots of dark hair without much colour—hair like smoke. I see her a suppressed ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... do not look through love to look on thee, Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be Its wrecking and last issue of delight. Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot Of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair—every petal a hollowed ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am Duc d'Etretat et de la ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... rose of the breaking dawn, as tender as the notes of a cooing dove calling gently to its mate, as soft as the touch of a flower-petal the words drifted through the curtain. With a whispered cry to Allah, his God, the man was upon his feet. With the strength of the oriental, which has its root in patience and its flower in achievement ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... had picked up her three celluloid fish and had trotted down the path. She wore her pink rompers, and as she bobbed along she was like a mammoth rose-petal blown by the wind. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... in spring is more beautiful than Man, and the first coming of the hyacinth more delectable than his face! When spring is fallen upon the days of summer, I carry away with mournful joy at night petal by petal the rhododendron's bloom. No lit procession of purple kings is nigh so fair as that. No beautiful death of well-beloved men hath such a glory of forlornness. And I bear far away the pink and white petals of ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... in Anatole France's writings with brief, clear cut, decisive touches, but "the murmurs and scents" of the great waters, the silences of the shadowy forests are not allowed to cross the threshold of his garden of Epicurus. Each single petal of a rose will have its curves, its colours, its tints; but the mysterious forces of subterranean life which bring the thing to birth are pushed back into the darkness. The marble-cold resistance of Anatole France's classical mind offers a hard polished surface against which the vague elemental ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in the basket, with a little space all around. It was a rather small loaf with a plain icing. But round the sides of it were trailed long sprays of ivy geranium, making a beautiful bordering. The centre was crowned with a white camellia in its perfection. From the tip edge of each outer petal depended a drop of gold, made to adhere there by some strong gum probably; and between the camellia and the ivy wreaths was a brilliant ring of gold spots, somewhat larger, set in the icing. Somebody, and it was probably the doctor, for want of better to do,—had carefully ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Awhile I frequent the Christian cloister, anon the mosque: But thee only I seek from fane to fane. Thine elect know naught of heresy or orthodoxy, whereof neither stands behind the screen of thy truth. Heresy to the heretic,—dogma to the orthodox,— But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... with the solitary petal in her hand, she presented it with a low bow, in elfish mockery of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... contentedly, thou wandering bee! Or pausing in chosen flowers drain their sweets; From honeyed petal thou canst never sip The sweetest sweet of sweets, as I from Love,— From Love's warm mouth draw sweetest sweet ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... buds that fold within them, Closed and covered from our sight, Many a richly tinted petal, Never looked on by the light: Fain to see their shrouded faces, Sun and dew are long at strife, Till at length the sweet buds open— Such ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... contrast between them. Beauty and the beast, he said to himself. He knew without seeing. He did not wish to see. He strove to shut away thought of the devastation of what had once been a man's goodly face. Doris' skin was like a child's, smooth and soft and tinted like a rose petal. Love, he said to himself, had made her bloom. It made him quake to think that she might suddenly see out of those dear, blind eyes. Would she look and shudder and turn away? He shook off that ghastly thought. She would never see him. She could only touch him, feel him, hear the tenderness of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of their accommodating nature lies in the fact that within the Hyacinth or Tulip every petal of the coming flower is already stored. During the five or six years of its progressive life the capacities of the bulb have been steadily conserved, and we have but to unfold its beauty, aiming at short stout growth and intensity of colour. Of course there is an immense ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... there, watching her changeful face with its lovely mouth and the eyes that some trick of light and shade had deepened to the purple of an iris petal's markings; and the sight seemed to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the broad June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal and leaf caressed. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... was so strong and active, stretched weak and fainting, compelled Fong Wu into spoken comment. "The petal of a plum blossom," he said compassionately, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... cliffs near by the river Long cymes of honey-suckle grew, Odorous in the air; and the violet, too, Entangling with the phlox, and ever Entessellated beds of petal'd mosaic Stretching out before us, rich As the drapery of a dream in which The toil of life was not prosaic. Neither can the hungry ear Enfashion music softer, sweeter, Drawn from lyre, than the meter— Rippling cascade ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... her face was pale as a lily petal held against the light, her sweet lips drooped wistfully at the corners, and I thought she spoke but seldom. The smile with which she had greeted me had been fleeting, and even as it lingered there had been an expression in her large soft eyes ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... and split at the side for walking; a tight-fitting bodice, light in color (a man knows little of the technicalities of such things); throat bare, with a flaring rolled collar behind—a throat like a rose-petal with the moonlight on it; arms bare, save ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the Anemones; those innocent looking flowers really possess powerful weapons in the shape of tiny lassos, which are concealed in lasso-cells. These lasso-cells, which are very small, are carefully hidden in the walls of those petal-like tentacles, or feelers of the Anemone. Still other lasso-cells are hidden in the mouth of the Anemone, and inside its stomach. In the cells the long, slender, thread-like lassos lie coiled up ready for use. The lassos escape from the cells by turning themselves inside out ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... A sepal, petal, and a thorn Upon a common summer's morn, A flash of dew, a bee or two, A breeze A caper in the trees, ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... love of that which your work represents—if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you—if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves you—if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fulness thereof. But if, on the other hand, it is petty self-complacency in your own skill, trust in precepts and laws, hope for ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... returning you would find that their fleeting loveliness was over. Their slender red stems rise but a few inches, and are surrounded with three leaves; the six white petals of the cup-shaped flower droop a little and have a golden centre. Under the petal is a tinge of purple, which is sometimes faintly visible through it. The leaves are not only three in number, but are each cut deeply thrice; they are hardy, but the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the window with the full light on her face, somehow oddly defenceless in her extreme embarrassment, and he could see the light powdering of freckles on her nose, as well as that curious, camellia-petal fineness of skin which always escaped notice until the observer came quite close, for there was a tinge of sallowness in the colour which prevented people from admiring ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... twenty-two made a delightful picture of youth and happiness, and radiant, unbroken health. Her slight figure was upright as a dart; her cheeks were smooth and fresh as a petal of a rose; her hair was thick and luxuriant, and she bore herself with the jaunty, self-confident gait of one whose lines have been cast in pleasant places, and who is well satisfied of her own ability to keep them pleasant to ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... grass is thinner are the heads of purple clover; pluck one of these, and while meditating draw forth petal after petal and imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but the green framework, like stolen jewellery from which the gems have been taken. Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have been remorselessly dragged, blue scabious, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... This, of course, is difficult at first, but with the proper training the pupil should be able to see the phrases at a glance, just as a botanist in examining a new flower would divide it in his mind's eye into its different parts. He would never mistake the calyx for a petal, and he would be able to determine at once the peculiarities of each part. In addition to the melodic phrases the pupil should be able to see the metrical divisions which underlie the form of the piece. He should be able to tell whether the composition is one of eight-measure ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... white. Now far beyond the grayness, to the west, the cone of Fuji flashes into splendor. It, too, is pink. Its shape is of a lotos bud, and the long fissures that plough a mountain side are now but delicate gold veining on a petal. Slowly it seems to open. It is the chalice of a new day, the signal and the pledge of consecration. Husky crows awake in the pine trees, and doves under the temple eaves. The east is red beyond the river, and the round, red sun, insignia of this ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... would be a striking illustration of the narrowing effect on scientific theory of the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded pebble has no aesthetic element savours of a perverse arbitrariness. Touch is no doubt wanting in a prerogative of hearing and sight which we shall presently see to be important, namely, that being acted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for Elba was at hand, it will be remembered he bade good-by personally to those who had served him so faithfully. It was an affecting scene when he kissed his generals and saluted the swarthy grenadiers in the same way. When told of it Madame picked a petal or two from her bouquet and said, "You see, my dears, the difference is this: while Judas kissed but one, the Little Man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... attempts to gather them "by hand"! Properly warned, she will take a knife, sever the flower from the pear (there is no stem to speak of), pick it up by the tip of a petal, carry it home in a paper or handkerchief, and dump it gently into water—happy if she does not feel a dozen intolerable prickles here and there, and have to extract, with help of magnifying-glass and tweezers, as many needle-like barbs rankling ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all their beauty unimpaired. The poison sank into the very hearts of the roses, whence it breathed death from every petal and every leaf, leaving them fair as she who had sent them, but fatal to the approach of lip or nostril, fit emblems of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... some massive and strong, like those in which the earth keeps her mineral treasures; then, at last, on a round charcoal disk, he traced out a perfect rose, in a fragrant white powder, which piled up under his fingers, petal after petal, circle after circle, till the feathery stamens were buried out of sight. Then, as we held our breath for fear of disturbing it, with a good-natured little chuckle, he shook it off into the fire, and by a few quick strokes of red turned the black charcoal disk into a shield ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... had come to Clovelly to spend several weeks, I could never have learned to know the place as I had divined it, in this adventure. You seem to learn more about a flower by inhaling its perfume after rain, don't you think, than by dissecting it, petal by petal? I fancy there is something like that in getting the feeling and impression of places at their best, by sudden revelations. Of course, I want to go back to Clovelly, but not with any of the Mrs. Nortons of the world. I couldn't bear to do that, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... al Prato, a beautiful and spacious church in a wilderness of Piazza, built in 1294. And there suddenly you come upon the little flowers of St. Francis, faded and fallen—here a brown rose, there a withered petal; here a lily broken short, there a nosegay drooped and dead: and you realise that here you are face to face with something real which has passed away, and so it is with joy you hurry out into the sun, which will always shine with splendour and life, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... cheek above the blossom, and whether the cheek or the petal were the redder, who should say? If there were any ill at ease in that room, it was not Law of Lauriston. He stood calm as though there by right. It was an escapade, an adventure, without doubt, as both these young women saw plainly enough. And now, what to do with this adventure ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... they are perceived hu- 247:21 manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and re- flects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, 247:24 outline, and color. It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with 247:27 starry gems, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the moth quivering like a flower petal in the breeze. "Well, there it is!" he said cheerily. "Let's give it the benefit ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... sailed away on the summer air. Here I thought his childish fancy had built a paradise and peopled it with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the sunshine of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting honey-bee, the wheeling June-bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse-beat of the dashing brook sounded in his ear notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming-bird, darting like a sunbeam, to kiss the pouting lips of ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... woo the daughter of the King of the Fire-flies until every petal was dotted with them. One after another in a long troop they appeared. Each in his own way, proudly, humbly, boldly, mildly, with flattery, with boasting, even with tears, each proffered his love, told his rank or expatiated on his fortune or vowed ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... beautiful at every turn of the paddles. We pass through a whole squadron of fishing-boats, hovering on their long lateen sails, and seeming like butterflies balanced upon the waves, which are blue as the petal of the iris. Algiers gradually becomes a mere impression of light. The details have been effaced little by little, and melted into a general hue of gold and warmth: the windowless houses and the walls extending in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... stared into dark space. She walked languidly and purposelessly to the wardrobe. She stopped to pick a petal from the carpet. The sound of the last door was over, the retiring footfall had died away in the distance, the last voice was hushed; the moon was shining on the sea. A lovely scene, silver and blue; but how the girl's heart ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... it. The light does not strike back the same reflection from every earthly thing. The serene lake mirrors back the light, in a calm flood of glory, the flashin' waterfall breaks it into a thousand dazzlin' sparkles. The dewy petal of the yellow field lily, reflects its own ray of golden light back, so does the dark cone of the pine tree, and the diamond, the opal, the ruby, each tinges the light with its own coloring, but the light is all from above. And they all reflect the light, in their own way for ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... most fully developed above the spot-zones, thus offering to our eyes a rudely quadrilateral contour. The four great luminous sheaves forming the corners of the square are made up of rays curving together from each side into "synclinal" or ogival groups, each of which may be compared to the petal of a flower. To Janssen, in 1871, the eclipsing moon seemed like the dark heart of a gigantic dahlia, painted in light on the sky; and the similitude to the ornament on a compass-card, used by Airy in 1851, well conveys the decorative effect of the beamy, radiated ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... six-petaled star; but on examining them more closely, we shall find that they are thrown into a group of three magnitudes by the expansion of two of the inner petals above the stamens to a breadth greater than any of the four others; while the third inner petal, on which the stamens rest, contracts itself into the narrowest of the six, and the three under petals remain of one intermediate magnitude, as seen ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... known above my forehead glance and gleam, A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream, Of one rose petal plucked from ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... been blowing strongly, all the morning, and the waves were rolling in heavily. Their green tops were crested with white foam which rose high and higher, curved over as softly as a rose petal, balanced for a brief second, then fell with a crash and went flowing up the bank of the beach, circling and twisting in countless eddies that now and then crept to the very awnings and caused a stampede among their inhabitants. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... most suggestive lines. She seems to shine out of her clothes a lustrous, shimmering figure, female rather than feminine, and gorgeous rather than lovely. Margaret Fenn is in full bloom; not a drooping petal, not a bending stamen, not a wilted calyx or bruised leaf may be seen about her. She is a perfect flower whose whole being—like that of a flower at its full—seems eager, thrilling, burning with anticipation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... porch the humming-bird Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred, The Old World flowers ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Bring me those five boxes on the first row of shelves." I brought the boxes to her room and placed them on the table. She opened the first one and it contained a most beautiful peony made of coral and jade and each petal trembled like a real flower. This flower was made by stringing the petals which were made of coral on very fine brass wire, also the leaves which were made of pure jade. She took this flower and placed it on the right side of her headdress. Then she opened ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... June midnight on the edge of the Milky Way,—a sheaf no Ceres owned, no foodfull garner coveted, but the satiating aliment of beauty, fresh as if God that hour had pronounced them good, and set his sign-manual upon each delicate tremulous petal, that might have been sapphire, save for its wistful translucence. And on the teapoy in the window stood two dainty baskets of clean willow, in which we had that day brought home chestnuts from the wood;—mine was full ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... to rest upon this fragrant flower, to touch petal and stem and root, and unite them with the vast world in which, by a universal contribution of force, they have come to maturity, I find myself face to face with the oldest and the deepest questions men have ever sought to answer. Elements of earth ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... pettiest personal sphere of dew The summ'd morn shines complete as in the blue Big dew-drop of all heaven;"*9* beside which must be hung this exquisite picture: "The dew-drop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky."*10* ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... introduced to quite a different class of holdfasts from either of those which we have examined. The blossom of the cobea is formed of a curious and elegantly-formed calyx of five angles, exquisitely veined, and of a tender green—itself a flower, or, at least, when divested of its one bell-shaped petal, looking like one. From this calyx slowly unfolds a noble bell, at first of a soft, creamy green; but the second day of its existence it becomes tinged and veined with a delicate plum colour, which on the third day is its prevailing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... modelling wax flowers. Both these require to be moistened before they are applied to the wax. Warmth as well as moisture is essential for these. A glass of lukewarm water will answer the purpose; but great care must be taken to shake off the surplus water; for if the globules were to fall upon the petal, it would occasion ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... her breast. For a moment she seemed to forget him, then quietly—"I thank you, I am very grateful." She opened the book and, plucking a petal from the rose, dropped it between the leaves. Then looking up she said gently, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of favoring circumstance—and Love is but the working out of the greatest of all Nature's laws. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of old, when, amid thoughts of thee, I asked, 'Loves she, loves she not?' and the poppy petal clung not, and gave no crackling sound, but withered on my smooth forearm, even ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a single blossom of the yellow oxalis, the only flower to be seen; and very pretty it is, each petal with an orange spot at ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... love-light is a living guest, Whether a petal's palm confine Its glitter to a lily's breast, Or in unbounded space a starry line Stretches, till flagging Thought must droop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... are the step-children, with only one chair; the two small gay petals are the daughters, with a chair each; and the large gay petal is the wife, with two chairs. To find the father, one must strip away the petals until the stamens and pistils are bare. These then bear a fanciful resemblance to an old man with a flannel wrapper about his neck, having his shoulders upraised, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... In the wood he travels glad, Without better fortune had, Melancholy without bad. Knowledge this man prizes best Seems fantastic to the rest: Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds, Boughs on which the wild bees settle, Tints that spot the violet's petal, Why Nature loves the number five, And why the star-form she repeats: Lover of all things alive, Wonderer at all he meets, Wonderer chiefly at himself, Who can tell him what he is? Or how meet in human elf Coming ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... chrysanthemums, it is necessary to build up the most prominent flower solidly in clay, putting on the outer petals separately. The back flower can have the near petals modelled, while the distant ones can be just indicated on plaque with incised lines. Don't attempt to copy every petal in clay, which is an impossibility, but try and get the general effect of the flower in your modelling. Take the prominent petals first, and put them on in their proper positions, and the less important petals can then be filled ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... fierce flight over, and his body cast Somewhere alone in a strange place—the life Stirred in him faintly, as at feeble strife With covetous Death for ownership of him. And 'fore his eyes the world began to swim All vague, and doubtful as a dream that lies Folded within another, petal-wise. And therewithal himself but half believed His own eyes' testimony, and perceived The things that were about him as who hears A distant music throbbing toward his ears At noontide, in a flowery hollow of June, And listens till he knows not if the tune ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... and life is full of pin pricks. "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" are multiplied in number, and furthermore the reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperaesthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... there, selling daffodils along the windy street, Poor drooping, dusty daffodils — but oh! so Summer sweet! Green stems that stab with loveliness, rich petal-cups to hold The wine of Spring to lips that cling ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... across the sea-plain while the east kindled and glowed. Above us the clouds changed from grey to dove-colour, from that to rose-pink; and then, straight before us, the sun came up and gave us gold for redness. The little purple wild flowers opened, showing us where the night had left a jewel on every petal, and the sleepy soldiers plucked them as they passed and cheered themselves with their faint fragrance. The day, like the night, comes quickly there, and brings with it an even greater change. For in that last week ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Edible.—The petal-like agaric is so called from the fancied resemblance of the plant to the petal of a flower. The plant usually grows in a nearly upright or more or less ascending position, or when it grows from the side of a trunk it is somewhat shelving. It is somewhat spathulate ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... gate. Yes! they have gone off to spend their honeymoon, and Margaret has written to me twice to say how happy they are together in the Hesperides. Dear happiness! Selfish, indeed, were he who would envy you one petal of that wonderful rose—Rosa Mundi—God has given ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... your Chieftain, That the foe comes from the Northland; Yet they shall not harm your people If you stand upon the hilltop With the talisman I give you. Take this Magic Iris with you, Guard it well for every petal Has a charm that brings an answer To a prayer that is unselfish, To a prayer for all the people That will live around your harbor. Never, while you guard the hilltop, Shall a foe invade your country. Petals three there are; three wishes Shall be granted when you make them.' Then the ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... ask of thee—but I dared not—the rose wreath thou hadst on thy neck. Thus I waited for the morning, when thou didst depart, to find a few fragments on the bed. And like a beggar I searched in the dawn only for a stray petal or two. ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... cannot but think, clever as the whole is, that parts are weak, as when he doubts whether each curvature of the beak of humming-birds is of service to each species. He admits, perhaps too fully, that I have shown the use of each little ridge and shape of each petal in orchids, and how strange he does not extend the view to humming-birds. Still odder, it seems to me, all that he says on beauty, which I should have thought a nonentity, except in the mind of some sentient ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the leaves, and scarcely noticeable; in Eryngium and Sanicula they are in heads. The calyx is coherent with the two-celled ovary, and the border is either obsolete or much reduced. There are five petals inserted on the ovary, and external to a fleshy disk. Each petal has its tip inflexed, giving it an obcordate appearance. The common colors of the corolla are white, yellow, or some shade of blue. Alternating with the petals, and inserted with them, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... the fate of man, is for us only a professor, a piece of chalk, and a blackboard. The solemn and unapproachable skies we have vulgarized; we have peeped and botanized among the flowers of light, pulled off every petal, fumbled in every calyx, and reduced them to the bare stem of order and class. The stars can no longer maintain their divine reserves, but whenever there is a conjunction and congress of planets, every enterprising ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... me not—he loves me—" Her lips formed the words inaudibly, as countless lips have formed them in love's history, and the last petal fluttered ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... pale moon like a petal Floats in the pearly dusk of spring, Come with arms outstretched to take me, Come with lips pursed ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... to sweetness? Perhaps the shy spirit of life and loveliness, mother of men and of wild-flowers and grasses, had come to it, bringing a whiter sunshine and the mystic silence of her forests, and touching every flowery petal with her invisible finger to make it burn like fire, and giving a ringing woodland ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell circling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... o'er wastes of lily-haunted field The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune, And broad and glittering like an argent shield High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon, Did no strange dream or evil memory make Each tremulous petal ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... stream of petal beauty flows, Softly the white strings trickle down and shine. Oh! speak to me, my love, I crave a rose. Sing me a song, for ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... closely infolded, quivers a little, and swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,—you watch,—another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... enclosure of the altar contains alternating masks expressing Intelligence and Ignorance in equal measure, symbolizing the Peoples of the World. A gradual development to the higher forms of plant life is expressed upward in the altar tower, the conventionalized lily petal being the highest form." ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... petal-strewn grass under some Judas trees beside the lake shore, as I meander among these thoughts, and each of us, disregardful of his ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... me with his keen shafts without stopping for a moment! O amiable and cheerful girl, I have been bitten by Kama who is even like a venomous viper. O thou of swelling and large hips, have mercy on me! O thou of handsome and faultless features, O thou of face like unto the lotus-petal or the moon, O thou of voice sweet as that of singing Kinnaras, my life now depends on thee! Without thee, O timid one, I am unable to live! O thou of eyes like lotus-petals, Kama is piercing me incessantly! O large-eyed girl, be merciful unto me! ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... through the woods, or sitting between the knees of the old hemlock beside the river. And always her hair was blond and soft and loosely curling, her eyes of a brown so bright and clear that it seemed to glow with hidden gold, and her face a full oval, tinted like the petal ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Luce. Three males, one female. Some of the species have a beautifully freckled flower; the large stigma or head of the female covers the three males, counterfeiting a petal with ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... cold tears Were one in brooding mystery, Though death's loud thunder came upon him, Though death's loud thunder struck him down— The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder, Till he saw our wide nation, each State a flower, Each petal a park for holy feet, With wild fawns merry on every street, With wild fawns merry on every street, The vista of ten thousand ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... moved through the white kind of darkness. Standing there, buffeting her pink nails across her pink palms, Mrs. Connors followed the westward trend of that army. Out from it, a face lying suddenly back flashed up at her, a mere petal riding a swift current. But at sight of it Mrs. Blutch Connors inclined her entire body, pressing a smile and a hand against the cold pane, then turned inward, flashing on an electrolier—a bronze Nydia holding out a cluster of frosted bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... June light On the open bank of the river, In the summer of manhood, young; And over the water bright Is a lair that is overhung With coned pink blooms that quiver And droop, till the water's breast Is of petal ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... ground and so arranged as to form a pyramid, at the summit of which rose a certain dragon's-head tulip which Balthazar alone possessed. This flower, named "tulipa Claesiana," combined the seven colors; and the curved edges of each petal looked as though they were gilt. Balthazar's father, who had frequently refused ten thousand florins for this treasure, took such precautions against the theft of a single seed that he kept the plant always in the parlor and often spent whole days ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... NOW sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The firefly ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy |
