"Scavenger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... investigation is therefore a very dangerous organ of research in the hands of the malicious; for it goes like a reproductive scavenger through the field of human consciousness increasing the evil which it is its purpose to collect. The apostolic definition of "charity" as the thing which "thinketh no evil" is hereby completely justified; and the profound Goethean maxim, that the way to enlarge the capacities ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... tinge, which soon increases and interferes with the view. This is owing to the growth of a minute confervoid vegetation, which must be kept down. For this purpose the Snail is the natural remedy, being the ready scavenger of all such nuisances. Snails cling to the sides, and clean away and consume all this vegetable growth. The Lymnea is among the most efficient, but unfortunately is destructive, by eating holes in the young fronds of the larger plants, and thus injuring their appearance. To this objection ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... by the hundreds of them which can be seen, but also by the many small but very fat spiders whose webs bar the entrance to three-fourths of the spathes. During the present spring a few specimens of a small scavenger beetle have been captured within the spathes of this plant.... Finally, other and more attractive flowers opening, the bees appear to cease visiting those of this species, and countless small flies take their place, compensating for their small ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... beneficial provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or latent multitude. But, in view of the large and important part they play (as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their potential and their actual numbers. The reserve and the active members of the force should both be counted in, ready ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... day came, as soon as the scavenger of the Sun sweeps the last traces of the Shades from the streets and squares of Heaven, the magicians returned, and no sooner had they the ring in their hands than they instantly vanished, and not a trace of them was to be seen, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... snow-white plumage relieved only by black beak and feet, and black, beady eye. These little birds abound in the pack-ice, but the blue-grey southern fulmar and the Antarctic petrel were also to be seen, and that unwholesome scavenger, the giant petrel, frequently lumbered by; while the skua gull, most pugnacious of bullies, occasionally flapped past, on his way to make some less formidable bird disgorge ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... vacancy—was within call, within touch; he stayed there as to be in it again, high above it though he was still perched; he watched as for some comforting common fact, some vulgar human note, the passage of a scavenger or a thief, some night-bird however base. He would have blessed that sign of life; he would have welcomed positively the slow approach of his friend the policeman, whom he had hitherto only sought to avoid, and was not sure that if the patrol had come into sight he mightn't have ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... large brazier beside which lay an immense pair of pincers. In one corner stood a great oaken frame about three feet high moved by rollers. This was the rack. Upon the wall hung a broad hoop of iron opening in the centre with a hinge—a dreadful instrument of torture called the Scavenger's daughter. The walls and floor were covered with gauntlets, saws and other implements of torture, but the rack caught and held her eyes with ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... boasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brain ran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a "mud-cart," and the writer a "scavenger." Afterward he asks, "Shall he fling dirt and receive rose-water?" This metaphor, by the way, is taken from Marmontel's Memoirs; who, lamenting to Chamfort the shedding of blood during the French revolution, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in profit; And had a gift to pay what they call'd for; And stuck not like your mastership. The poor income I glean'd from them, hath made me, in my parish, Thought worthy to be scavenger; and, in time, May rise to be overseer of the poor: Which if I do, on your petition, Wellborn, I may allow you thirteen-pence a quarter; And you ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... a place one would expect to see the bleaching bones of sailors, lost at sea, or the broken and dismantled hulk of a galleon, half buried in the sand. A shadow crosses our vision, and slowly there comes to our sight a shark, that scavenger of the deep, a fitting spot for such as he to come upon the stage. Slowly he passes, turning partly on his side, showing the cruel mouth with rows of serrated teeth. His eyes look at us as if in anger at being cheated of his prey, then on he glides like a specter, and ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... the night. Its little arm was crunched and stript of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately—it died almost immediately. A man came to see me, who for a long time used to heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats in order to bury them decently—who could tell, perhaps the soul of his grandfather had found habitation in that cat? While he was doing this pious work, never a morning passed that he did ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... humble, as not to deserve a second glance from the lowest of scavenger or pirate ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... I am nothing; I may not claim equality with the scavenger of the Western streets; or with the donkey-boys of the Eastern bazaar. Here I am served with fear and servility, being a man of riches; across the waters, I may sun myself in the smiles of women as long ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... firm in his behaviour with the prison authorities. He knew the laws and insisted on their being carried out. Therefore he was disliked by the authorities. Three weeks before a jailer struck one of the scavengers who had spilt some soup over his new uniform. Vasiliev took the part of the scavenger, saying that it was not lawful to strike ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... often, going across country, perhaps to where some slant-winged scavenger hanging in the air signaled prospect of a dinner, and found his track such as a man, a very intelligent man accustomed to a hill country, and a little cautious, would make to the same point. Here a detour to avoid a stretch of too little cover, there a pause on the rim of a gully to ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... searching, scouring and hustling the intestines in the greatest possible haste, in order to remove an obstruction about three hundred inches distant from where these "forcers" had entered the intestinal sewer. With mercury as a scavenger the work is pretty thoroughly done, though extra care has to be taken that some of the teeth may remain after the victim survives the additional intestinal inflammation occasioned by its ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... true, are not new. Some of our familiar friends of the plains are still with us. There are the kite, the scavenger vulture, the common myna, and a number of others, but these are the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... Horvendile had made comes presently a garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel for his health's sake, whose name was John. And this scavenger cried, "Oh, horrible! for here is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear and ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... caricature in St. James's-street, or a squib in a weekly newspaper—a power which exposed to relentless ridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, the loftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius—and which could not have deprived a beggar of his obol or a scavenger of his office: THE POWER ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Martini-Henry, 1871; and the Lee-Metford magazine rifle. On the right, between two grotesque figures, called Gin and Beer, from the entrance to the Buttery of the old Palace of Greenwich, is a case containing executioners' swords (foreign), thumb-screws, the Scavenger's Daughter for confining the neck, hands, and feet, bilboes for ship use, and thumb-screws. Observe also the so-called "Collar taken from the Spanish Armada," which however was here in 1547, and has been in ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... scavenger, and orders to the Water Board, and how many other orders nobody knows; and they sprinkled themselves with camphor, ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... shepherds who possess collies, such proud, useful servants and friends, that no bribe would induce them to part with them. But what old favourite dog or even bird is there that any one would part with? Man, be he scavenger or duke, is very similar ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... too tight—but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect—he hangs aloft longer; but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big charnel bird. Such is the way of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna handkerchief slit ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... to a like life with that of sunshine and pines, a Utopia more Christ-like than the heaven (which Christ never taught) of eternal harp-playing and golden streets. But as for making it real, every man's life should have the integrity of meaning of that of a tree. A. statesman, B. seer, C. scavenger: pines, raspberries, oaks. Impossible, as we know. And then, a thistle at the beginning knows it is a thistle, and cannot be anything else, so there is the end of it; but when Pratt, by nature ne knife-grinder, asserts himself poet, what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the cab and looked about me. It was stuck on like a swallow's nest to the end of a great row of commonplace houses, nearly a quarter of a mile in length, but itself was not the work of one of those wretched builders who care no more for beauty in what they build than a scavenger in the heap of mud he scrapes from the street. It had been built by a painter for himself, in the Tudor style; and though Percivale says the idea is not very well carried out, I like ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Waltham, the Prior of St. Mary Spital, four orders of friars, the Mayor and all the aldermen of London, the gentlemen of the Inns of Court, the Lord Steward, and all the clerks of London, &c., also attended. What a contrast to the present condition of the place, now a scavenger's yard, once the apparently last resting-place of the councillor of a mighty sovereign! "They that did feed delicately, that were brought up in scarlet, embrace dunghills. The holy house where our fathers ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... with the wind, yet turning again and again to rise against it,—helping himself thus to its adverse, uplifting pressure in the place of wing-strokes, perhaps,—and passing onward all the while in beautiful circles. He, too, scavenger though he is, has a genius for being graceful. One might almost be willing to be a buzzard, to fly ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of the dishes they most enjoyed was cooked "mathametlo," a large frog, which, during a period of drought, takes refuge in a hole in the root of certain bushes, and over the orifice a large variety of spider weaves its web. The scavenger-beetle, which keeps the Kuruman villages sweet and clean, rolls the dirt into a ball, and carries it, like Atlas, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... are well known. No fruit or vegetables are found in these villages: not even onions, common in most places. The birds have all a strange appearance. I am no naturalist, and wonder when I should examine. That filthy species of vulture, the scavenger of Zinder, is seen in twos and threes. The woods abound in turtle-doves. I gave the Kashalla a ring for himself and his female slave, or wife, as it may be. Very few men of this sort have wives: all their women ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... to assert his equality against all comers, sucked his knife for some moments, and made a cut with it at the butter, just as Martin was in the act of taking some. There was a juiciness about the deed that might have sickened a scavenger. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... His character is not one that arouses any sympathetic enthusiasm, and probably no one is sorry when towards the end of the story Sloppy seizes hold of the mean little creature, carries him out of the house, and deposits him in a scavenger's cart ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... ones, for some of the town men are not nice at all; but the East Coast men are so simple and fine, but then, you know, they are so poor. Our dear Mr. Fullerton told me that in very bad weather the best men cannot earn so much as a scavenger ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... referred to, as they have not been in any way acted on by worms. When we consider how much matter is daily brought into a great city for building, fuel, clothing and food, and that in old times when the roads were bad and the work of the scavenger was neglected, a comparatively small amount was carried away, we may agree with Elie de Beaumont, who, in discussing this subject, says, "pour une voiture de materiaux qui en sort, on y en fait entrer cent." {53} Nor should we overlook the effects of fires, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... spider and the fly with undisguised hostility to the spider. "That," said Robert, home from the front—"that is simply a sentimental point of view. My sympathies as a practical person are all with the spider. He is the friend of man, the devourer of insects, the scavenger of the gardens. He helps in the great task of keeping the equilibrium of nature. Moreover," said he, "I have seen you kill greenflies yourself. You killed them because you knew they were a nuisance. Why should you object to the spider doing the same useful ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... was generally looked upon by the Mahomedan as unclean. He continues, as all the world knows, to be still so regarded. The dog, in the East, is at once tolerated and neglected: he may be slightly better than the pig, but, like that wholly unclean animal, he is a scavenger, living largely on offal and what he is able ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... of torture, invented by Sir William Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII. "Scavenger" is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... us can see the light resting upon a bishop's crosier, but we cannot see the radiance on the ordinary shepherd's staff. We can discern the hallowedness of a priest's vocation, but we see no sanctity in the calling of the grocer, or of the scavenger in the street. We can see the nimbus on the few, but not on the crowd; on the unusual, but not upon the commonplace. But the very birth-hour of Christianity irradiated the humble doings of humble people. When ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... a singularly truthful estimate of his own character and of his scientific accomplishments when he declared himself to be simply "a street scavenger (un chiffonier) of science. With my hook in my hand and my basket on my back, I ramble about the streets of science and gather up whatever I can find." The comparison was singular, but it was apt; he was, indeed, the ragpicker ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... truth-lover! You purity-monger! It STINKS, your truth and your purity. It stinks of the offal you feed on, you scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. You are foul, FOUL and you must know it. Your purity, your candour, your goodness—yes, thank you, we've had some. What you are is a foul, deathly thing, obscene, that's what you are, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... it? My office protects me. All India knows I am holy." The Adjutant, being a first-class scavenger, is allowed to go where he pleases, and ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... gave the table a brush with a cloth he carried, then thrust his head forward like an ill-tempered scavenger bird. ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... Imperial Government, one might expect to find a more despotic code of laws in force than in a country like England. When an Englishman goes to a morning or evening concert, he does not present himself in the attire of a scavenger, and there is no reason for supposing that he would appear in any unbecoming garb if liberty of dress were permitted to him at the opera.... If the check-takers are empowered to inspect and decide as to the propriety of the cut and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... invited to a tea-party by one of our rich upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the Revolution and by Bonaparte, transformed into a Legislator, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of livres. In this house I saw for the first time the famous Madame Chevalier, the mistress, and the indirect cause of the untimely ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... treated, are indicated by the following notice, lately published by the proprietors of a menagerie, in New York. "The proprietors wish it to be understood, that people of color are not permitted to enter, except when in attendance upon children and families." For two shillings, any white scavenger would be freely admitted, and so would negroes, provided they came in a capacity that marked their dependence—their presence is offensive, only when they come as independent ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... dream that I speak as one defrauded of delight, sick, shaken by each heart-beat or paralyzed, stretched at length, who gasps: these ripe pears are bitter to the taste, this spiced wine, poison, corrupt. I cannot walk— who would walk? Life is a scavenger's pit—I escape— I only, rejecting it, lying here on ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... black vulture (Cathartes atratus), acts the part of a scavenger, and as such is of great use throughout the whole centre of South America, as also in the northern continent. Disgusting as are its habits and appearance, it is carefully protected, on account of the service it ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... one of the true women living, and the heartiest of backers, if she can be taught to see her course. I fancy I can do that. She 's narrow, but she is not one of the class who look on the working world below them as, we'll say, the scavenger dogs on the plains of Ilium were seen by the Achaeans. And my failure would be no loss to you! Your name shall not be alluded to as empowering me to plead for her help. But I want your consent, or I may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stood two men looking down into the water, seen dark green below through a tangle of brier and blackthorn and emerald foliage of budding elder. The sea served base uses here, for the dust and dirt of many a cottage was daily cast into the lap of the great scavenger who carried all away. The low cliffs were indeed spattered with filth, and the coltsfoot, already opening yellow blossoms below, found itself rudely saluted with cinders and potato-peelings, fishes' entrails, and suchlike ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... I never had any sort of an objection to your making a scavenger barrel of me, so ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... out in the dense bush have not suffered from these animal pests, but the dead, of course, have often disappeared and their bleached bones alone are left to tell the story. One might think that the hyaena, the universal scavenger, would be as loathed by the native as he is by us whose dead he disinters at night, if we have been too tired or unable to bury our casualties deep enough. But, strange as it may seem, the hyaena is worshipped by one very large ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... vegetable matter, a small heap of which refuse, including egg-shells and fishy offal—which the town in the matutinal cleansing process offered up to the sun-god as incense upon an altar—lay before every door, to be collected by the local scavenger at his leisure, or to be blown about and disseminated ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... moved nearer in. It is impossible to convey a sense of the terrifying effect produced by one's first experience of the night orgies of Oriental dogs, it curdles your blood to recall it. Seen by daytime, the dogs are harmless enough, as they go about their scavenger work among the heaps of refuse and filth. But by night they are howling demons, stampeding about the streets in mad groups, barking to and at each other, whining piteously one moment, roaring hoarsely and ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... curious play should never have been republished, when the volumes of Dodsley's Old Plays, in their very latest reissue, are encumbered with heaps of such leaden dulness and such bestial filth as no decent scavenger and no rational nightman would have dreamed of sweeping back into sight and smell ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... word as to diet. A general scavenger, the Burying-beetle refuses no sort of cadaveric putrescence. All is good to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile with no less animation. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... kicked. I had watched the brute eating garbage about the village for half an hour, and then when he wanted to chew my leg, I hit him. Ugh, daddy, don't you bring on these delicacies quite so sudden, or I shall forget my table manners. African scavenger dog! And I saw him make his morning meal. Here, Missis, for Heaven's sake ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... called the scavenger's daughter. Imagine a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well and just above the pivot that unites the blades a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the mountains. Lance, from his elevated point, could see the wolf's muzzle was bloody. That would mean, that a lost horse had been killed or an estray steer. He called down and we went in to see what thing this scavenger ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... a perpetual dessert of microscopic animalcules, whirled into that lovely avernus, its mouth, by the currents of the delicate ciliae which clothe every tentacle. The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... species of wood-dog is the white. They are low on the legs, of a dingy white colour, and much smaller than the other two. They neither attack cattle nor game, though fond of hunting rabbits. This dog is, in fact, a scavenger, living upon the carcases of dead sheep and animals, which are found picked clean in the night. For this purpose it haunts the neighbourhood of habitations, and prowls in the evening over heaps of refuse, scampering away at the least alarm, for ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies |
