"Starling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... majestic yellow vehicle with its cushioned, lavishly decorated interior, its thronelike seat above the world, was an exciting affair, even when it rested in the stable yard. When the horses were hitched to it, and Starling Tucker from the high seat with whip and reins directed its swift progress, with rattles and rumbles like a real circus wagon, it was thrilling indeed. This summer marked the first admission of Wilbur to an intimacy with the privileged driver which entitled him to mount dizzily to the high seat ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... encircled also with cornucopias, and has two large cartouches by way of supporters to the whole; and on the inside of the gate is the following inscription, viz., "Erected in the year 1671, Sir Samuel Starling, Mayor: continued in the year 1670, Sir Richard Ford, Lord Mayor: and finished in the year 1672, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... sentimental writers, has put in adequate language something of the feeling that should stir the heart of the sympathetic, at least, on seeing the unjust confinement of innocent birds. The Starling, which is the subject of his elevated sentiment, will appear in an early number of BIRDS. Sterne had just been soliloquizing somewhat favorably of the Bastile, when a voice, which he took to be that of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... presented her with the half kindly, half patronising air of one who feels that any genius in man or woman is a kind of disease, and that the person affected by it must be soothingly considered as a sort of "freak" or nondescript creature, like a white crow or a red starling. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... answer this question; so we got the Bible Dictionary and read there that a great many of our smaller birds, such as the starling, linnet, goldfinch, blackbird, lark, wagtail, and thrush, are found in Palestine, and that the Tree-sparrow has been seen in great numbers on Mount Olivet; while another kind, the Rock-sparrow, is often found perched upon a large stone, all alone, like the solitary bird mentioned ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... be cured; and the river Selemnus, in which a lover may bathe and be cured: but your brother will not permit that I go to Greece. You have a very cruel brother, mademoiselle; seven long years, no less, he has penned me here like a starling in a cage." ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... questions. They said to slavery: "Back! no entrance here! We pledge ourselves against you." And then there came up a little printer-boy, who whipped them into the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur's starling, nothing BUT slavery. He scattered all these gigantic shadows,—tariff, bank, constitutional questions, financial questions; and slavery, like the colossal head in Walpole's romance, came up and filled ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the principle of imitation to which languages in part owe their origin, but in the cases of forced imitation, the mere acquisition of a vocal trick, they only serve to illustrate that power of imitation, and are without significance. Sterne's starling, after his cage had been opened, would have continued to complain that he could not get out. If the bird had uttered an instinctive cry of distress when in confinement and a note of joy on release, there would have been a nearer approach to language ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... G.: Factors Governing Vascular Dilatation and Slowing of the Blood Stream in Inflammation, THE JOURNAL A. M. A., Dec. 26, 1914, p. 2279.] quotes Starling as finding that the blood vessels dilate from physical and chemical changes in the musculature, and that this dilatation is caused by deficient oxidation and accumulation of the products of metabolism, including carbon dioxid. This dilatation ordinarily is transient ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... remarkable superabundance of trees, was in summertime famous for its delightful variety of birds: magpies, jackdaws, thrushes and wagtails, in addition to the usual sparrows and tom-tits, were seen frequently; occasionally a lark or a starling would charm the villagers ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... him I held myself softly still and felt just that. I did not know he was a robin. The truth was that he was too young at that time to look like one, but I did not know that either. He was plainly not a thrush, or a linnet or a sparrow or a starling or a blackbird. He was a little indeterminate-colored bird and he had no red on his breast. And as I sat and gazed at him he gazed at me as one quite without prejudice unless it might be with the slightest tinge of favor— and hopped—and ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Southern bird which haunts the gardens of Greece, sings its "tio, tio, tio, tio, tix" of Aristophanes' comedy on this wind-swept Northern isle; the rose-coloured starling, that rare and beautiful bird of a warmer clime, has been seen here in the spring; the eagle and the golden eagle hover above its crags; the sparrow-hawk and the great gyrfalcon prey upon the small birds and little rodents; even the wild and shy osprey was known to build its eyrie upon ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... are apparently accidental rather than deliberate, so far as parasitical intent is concerned. The lapse is especially noticeable among such birds as build in hollow trees and boxes, as the woodpeckers and wagtails. Thus the English starling will occasionally impose upon and dispossess the green woodpecker. In the process of nature in such cases the stronger of the two birds would retain the nest, and thus assume the duties of foster-parent. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... about houses and towers and outbuildings. The titmouse with us is exclusively a wood-bird; but in Britain three or four species of them resort more or less to buildings in winter. Their redstart also builds under the eaves of houses; their starling in church steeples and in holes in walls; several thrushes resort to sheds to nest; and jackdaws breed in the crannies of the old architecture, and this in a much ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... 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 feather'd 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 who belong to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... of that meeting. Outside the old woman cursed and reviled Howel and Evan and the captive in turns unceasingly; but I heeded her no more than one heeds a starling chattering on the roof in the early morning. I had all that I sought, and aught else was as ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... faced the new-comer he had a sort of shiver in his heart that warned him to beware an enemy. Indeed, it was none other than the Blue Jay that had appeared so suddenly, and he had arrived that morning because the starling had told him of the thefts that had taken place, and the Blue Jay is well known as the policeman of the forest and ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... starling rolls his "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be quick" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... certain to give an unusually strong blessing, perhaps insuring, on top of freedom from poverty and disease, the prolongation of life until the coming of the Messiah. Yet it is not improbable that all these tales were insecurely based upon a single instance wherein one Starling Driggs, believing himself to stand in urgent need of a blessing, had offered to pay Uncle John for the service in vinegar. It had been unexceptionable vinegar, as Uncle John himself admitted, but being a hundred miles from home, and having no way to carry it, the Patriarch had been ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... in half an hour, Starling," said Chiltern, and led Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one of the high mahogany doors on the south side. "These are your rooms, Honora. I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you'll like them. If you don't, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the spot; but the parrot, by pursuing a middle course, saves his life and his master's honour. In the Panjabi legend Raja Rasalu, who was very frequently from home on hunting excursions, left behind him a parrot and a maina (hill starling), to act as spies upon his young wife, the Rani Kokla. One day while Rasalu was from home she was visited by the handsome Raja Hodi, who climbed to her balcony by a rope (this incident is the subject of many paintings in fresco on the panels of palaces and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... egg is found amongst the birds which scarcely quit their nests in the day, as hawks and owls; and that such birds as doves, which only lay one or two eggs, and sit immediately after, have their eggs white. The bright blue or bright green egg belongs to birds which make their nests in holes, as the starling, or construct them of green moss, or place them in the midst of grass, but always well covered. The eggs of many gallinaceous birds, that make their nests carelessly in the grass, are of a pale and less decided green, such as those of the partridge and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... only perform acts of imitation with their vocal organ; this organ, by their habitual efforts to render the sounds, and to vary them, becomes in them very perfect. Thus we know that several birds (the parrot, starling, raven, jay, magpie, canary bird, etc.) imitate the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... love those poplar trees; What tall and stalely things! See! on the top of one just now A starling sits and sings. He'll fall!—the twig bends with his weight! He likes that danger best. I see the red upon his wings,— Dark shining is the rest. I ween his little wife has built On that same tree ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... starling will display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head And ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... was black with them in many places, and our horses ploughed up a living spray, as they drove forward through the meadows. Every spear of grass was destroyed, and the wheat and rye fields were terribly cut up. We passed a large crag where myriads of starlings had built their nests, and every starling had a grasshopper ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... STARLING.—Threepence was placed on the head of this destructive bird last year in many parts of England. The old way was to put salt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... was divided into four sections: 1, Hawk people, under the chief Standing Hawk (now dead). 2, Blackbird people, under the chief Wajina-gahiga. B, Starling or Thunder people. 4, Owl ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... 'Pretty Pope of Rome,' with any starling in your Knight's ward," answered the constable, with a facetious air, checked, however, by the due respect to the supreme presence in which ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... therefore more properly an inhabitant of the warm valleys. I do not remember seeing it at Mussoorie, which is 6500 to 7000 feet, although at 5200 feet on the same range it is abundant during summer. Its notes and flight are very much those of the Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), and it delights to take a short and rapid flight and return twittering to perch on the very summit of the forest trees. I have never seen it on the ground, and its food appears ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... life, my darling, And I your love were death, We 'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, And ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... tillers and herdsmen of the manor slept, but which a-nights seemed now, by the small size of the beds, and the litter of useless and disregarded matters—bunches of dying flowers, feathers of birds, shells of starling's eggs, caddis worms in mugs, and the like—seemed to be inhabited for the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... A professor at King's College, London, giving his testimony, affirmed that "no student in England has EVER SEEN PAIN in an animal experiment"—a statement which in one sense everyone can accept, for who can say that he ever SAW a pain anywhere? Professor Starling, of the University College in London, declared that during his seventeen years of experimentation "on no occasion HAVE I EVER SEEN PAIN inflicted in any experiment on dog, cat, or rabbit in a physiological laboratory in this country." The experimenter ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the starling's courtship quaint, Heart made much of; 'twas a boon Won from silence, and too soon Wasted in the ample air: Building rooks far distant were. Scarce at all would speak the rills, And I saw the idle hills, In their amber hazes deep, Fold themselves ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... great surprise. The starling, which has been taught to murmur Evelyn's name, to-day shrieked out, 'Eva! Eva!' My first impulse was to wring its neck, my next to take it from its cage and hide it in my bosom. But I did neither. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 who belong ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the Orchard-Starling or Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways. Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly and domestic in his ways, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the pioneer of the Thrush family, and well worthy of the finer artists whose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... all ornithologists agreed that the curious starling-like bird known as the spotted-wing (Psaroglossa spiloptera) was a kind of aberrant starling, but systematists have lately relegated it to the Crateropodidae. At Mussoorie the natives call it the Puli. Its upper parts are dark grey spotted with ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... head, like a broken-hearted Lord Burleigh. Then he unloosed the handcuffs from Macbane's wrists, whistling all the while softly a popular air, lively in itself, with a cadence so plaintive that it might have been a penitential psalm. No romantic school-girl opening the cage to her pet starling ever displayed more hesitation and reluctance than Mr. Fitchett setting that grim old ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... nothing natural can possibly conceive what is above nature is indeed so palpably true as to deserve a place among philosophical axioms. Imagination itself, however lofty, wild, or daring its flights, cannot quit the universe—matter is its prison, where, like Sterne's starling, it is 'caged and can't get out.' Fortunately, however, imagination, though a prisoner, has abundance of room to legitimately exercise itself in. But, is it not obvious that if, as Des Cartes and D'Alembert ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... wilt see her when she seeks relief In worship; or, half fancying, half recalling, She draws mine image worn by absent grief; Or asks the caged, sweetly-singing starling: "Do you remember, dear, our ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... starling; that's twenty dollars your currency, if I reckon right," said Jack, giving his hat ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... flicker, vireo, wren, American robin, catbird, tanager, bobolink, blue jay, oriole, grosbeck or redbird, creeper, redstart, waxwing, woodpecker, humming bird, killdeer, swallow, blue bird, blackbird, meadow lark, bunting, starling, redwing, purple martin, brown thresher, American goldfinch, chewink or ground robin, pewee or phoebe bird, chickadee, fly catcher, knat catcher, mouse hawk, whippoorwill, snow bird, titmouse, gull, eagle, buzzard, or any wild bird other than ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various |
