"Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which was to be found only in Christ, and Christ had rejected him. 'My original and inward pollution,' he writes, 'was my plague and my affliction. I was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in God's eyes too. I thought every one had a better heart than I had. I could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution. Sure, thought I, I am given up to ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... be a toad, And live upon the vapor of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love For ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Toad and his lady, 'Twas they gave the Clart and the Poort, And the poine-apples, turbots, and lobsters, To feast the Lord Liftinint's Coort. But now that the quality's goin, I warnt that the aiting will stop, And you'll get at the Alderman's teeble The devil a bite or a dthrop, Or chop; And the butcher ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Italian, meaning "a little; slightly." The remaining twenty-six are good words. Of course a TAU-cross is a T-shaped cross, also called the cross of St. Anthony, and borne on a badge in the Bishop's Palace at Exeter. It is also a name for the toad-fish. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... simple sound, but only in an harmonious composition of sounds. I presumed to differ from this opinion, and mentioned the soft and sweet sound of a fine woman's voice. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, if a serpent or a toad uttered it, you would think it ugly.' BOSWELL. 'So you would think, Sir, were a beautiful tune to be uttered by one of those animals.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it would be admired. We have seen fine fiddlers whom we liked as little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... participating in some game, he finally "nailed it" in the possession of Demosthenes Walker, aged six, to the spontaneous outcry of "Cotched!" from the whole school. When produced from Master Walker's desk in company with a horned toad and a piece of gingerbread, it was found to be Concha's white satin slipper, the young girl herself, meanwhile, bending demurely over her task with the bereft foot tucked up like a bird's under her skirt. The master, reserving reproof of this and other enormities ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the others. Were it not that ears are not represented in reptiles, one would be tempted to regard the smaller appendages as representations of these organs. Their similarity to the row of spines on the back and the existence of spines on the head of the "horned toad" suggests this reptile, with which both ancient and modern Hopi are very familiar. On a fragment of a vessel found at Awatobi there is depicted the head of a reptile evidently identical with this, since the drawing is an almost perfect reproduction. There is ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... growled Reuben. "Time was you'd ha crawled to him. Now any snotty little toad can ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... toad or frog, and is not hungry, he worries the poor thing for an hour at a time; and when he finds a turtle he turns the creature over with his paw, sitting down gravely to watch its awkward struggle to get back onto its feet. At such times he has a most humorous expression, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... on the fringe of the Sussex rock country, to which we come again in earnest when we reach Maresfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells is the capital. But not even Tunbridge Wells with its famous toad has anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoathly's "Big-on-Little," in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the rock, from two very different points of view. An antiquary ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... round frightens people who are not acquainted with its ways. They are called locally, "pinch-bucks," as their horns resemble the antlers of a buck, and they can nip quite hard by pressing them together. I once saw a fight between a stag-beetle and a toad, it had evidently been proceeding for some time as both combatants were exhausted, but neither had gained any ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily; By the mountains—near the river 25 Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever; By the gray woods, by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp; By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls; 30 By each spot the most unholy, In each nook most melancholy,— There the traveller meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past: Shrouded forms that start and sigh 35 As they pass ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... finally turned away homeward, life went flat. Janet decided she was very tired after her long walk and her trying interview. But it did not matter, since she had her love potion. That was so much nicer a name than toad ointment. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... your fortune yourself, will you? This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d—d to you!" and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had withdrawn from her mouth in order to utter her gentle rebuke whizzed through the air, grazed Paul's cheek, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prostitution—probably don't object to that nowadays considering the novels we have. And his effect on the landscape——Until they stopped him he was trying very hard to get Shakespear's Cliff at Dover. He did for a time have the Toad Rock at Tunbridge. Still"—something like a sigh escaped from Toomer,—"his private life appears to be almost as blameless as anybody's can be.... Thanks no doubt to his defective health. I made the most careful enquiries when his knighthood was first discussed. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the lady was out of tune, I was in haste to leave her. I should make a very bad, and, I am sure, a miserable toad eater. I had much rather, if I were obliged to choose, earn my own bread, than live as toad eater ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... be free if I will consent. Consent! God of mercy!" she moaned, in a sudden tempest of passionate despair. "Consent ever to belong, body—and soul—to be touched, polluted, desecrated, by that inhuman monster; sold to him, to a creature without pity, whose heart is a toad, a venomous creeping thing—sold to him for this life, and to the vengeance of God hereafter; bartered, traded, and told that I am so vile and lost that the very price I am offered is an honour to me, being so much more than my value." She came toward me as she spoke, and ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... anything for the lessons. I also go every Tuesday to tell stories at the Children's Hospital. It is the dearest hour of the week. When I am distracted about bills and expenses and mamma's health and Mrs. Chadwick's mismanagements and Yung Lee's mistakes (for he is beautiful as an angel and stupid as a toad), I put on my hat and go out to the children, poor little things! They always have a welcome for me, bless them! and I always come back ready to take up my trials again. Edgar is waiting to take this to the post-box, ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Washington retreated to White Plains, where, on October 28th, the British, after a severe loss, took an outpost and won what is called the "Battle of White Plains." Henceforward Washington's movements resembled too painfully those of the proverbial toad under the harrow; and yet in spite of Lord Howe's efforts to crush him, he succeeded in escaping into New Jersey with a small remnant—some six thousand men—of his original army. The year 1776 thus closed in disaster which seemed to be irremediable. It showed that the British, having ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... possibly your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get it—it flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's head—you don't overlook that. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... behind-hand in improving the occasion; for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toad-stools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan; ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirmed its grasp, As if it said, "Detain me, if you please;" Yet there's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze; She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling dangerous to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... come, and with it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or team upon the road; ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... and old Mr. Toad are cousins. Of course you know that without being told. Everybody does. But not everybody knows that they were born in the same place. They were. Yes, Sir, they were. They were born in the Smiling Pool. Both had long tails and for a while no legs, and ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... these round wooden boxes had been split and spoilt, and half of it was left lying with the hollow part downwards. Under this shelter a toad had his house. Bevis peered in at him, and touched him with a twig to make him move an inch or two, for he was so lazy, and sat there all day long, except when it rained. Sometimes the toad told him a story, but not very often, for ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the door was flung open, and the young man found himself facing a big toad sitting in the centre of a number of young toads. The big toad addressed him, ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the child here at your peril! I'll go to the first lawyer in Rubbleford, and bring an action against you. I'll show you a little legal law! You ruin me indeed! I can prove that I only thrashed the little toad, the nasty deaf idiot, because she deserved it. I'll be even with you! I'll have the child back wherever you take her to. I'll show you a little legal law! (Here he stepped to the hall door.) I'll be even with you, damme! I'll charge you with setting ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... be so particular as all that, as if you were too grand to be rubbed by a frog. The fact is, you ought to be very much obliged to him. Suppose you could get nobody but a toad to do it, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... come up and eat a tomato-plant out of my hand, some one had robbed me of them. I was almost wild with despair and grief. Suddenly something tumbled over my foot. It was mostly stomach, but it had feet on each corner. A neighbor said it was a warty toad. He had eaten up my summer's work! He had swallowed my cunning little cut-worms. I tell you, gentle reader, unless some way is provided, whereby this warty toad scourge can be wiped out, I for one shall relinquish the joys of agricultural pursuits. When a common toad, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... to tell lies about it,—to say that it has no attractions, when everybody knows that it has,—but rather to let it make out its case just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons furnished by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits would have known how to deal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling with rage. 'I pray God, Mr. Sidney,' said this Chief Justice of a merry reign, after passing sentence, 'to work in you a temper fit to go to the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.' 'My ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... space was a dark pool, circled by crystalline palaces inhabited by the sacred snakes, from huge pythons to the terrapin proud of his tureen. Again, there was a whipsnake, and a toad, bloated as the aristocracy of old time, and puffed up as the plutocracy of to-day. For such is the lot ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... grouped into natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly understood, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... trees resembled an enormous toad crouching ready to spring, holding a spray of leaves in its mouth; another was a great coiled boa with an olive crest upon his head. There were trunks open like ogives, through the orifices of which shone the blue sky; monstrous serpents coiled in groups ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... if he were made of putty, having learnt the European way of greeting people, insisted on shaking hands with me, but, oh, how repulsive it was! His cold, squashy sort of boneless hand, gave you the impression that you had grasped a toad in your hand. And his face! Did you ever see a weaker, more depraved and inhuman head than that which was screwed on his shoulders? His cadaverous complexion was marked with the results of small-pox, which were certainly no improvement to his looks; his eyes had been set in his head anyhow, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... processes there is absolutely nothing. Only the coward who has more fear of death than dignity can comfort himself with the fact that his body will in time live again in the grass, in the stones, in the toad. To find one's immortality in the transmutation of substances is as strange as to prophesy a brilliant future for the case after a precious violin has been ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Steele's leaving off, there were two or three scrub Tatlers came out, and one of them holds on still, and to-day it advertised against Harrison's; and so there must be disputes which are genuine, like the strops for razors. I am afraid the little toad has not the true vein for it." Apparently, he hadn't, for later, referring to another number, Swift writes: "The jackanapes wants a right taste: I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... though as brown as a toad's back, was as prideful and full of power as old King Nebuchadneisher; and how to exhibit all his purple and fine linen, he aye thought and better thought, till at last the happy determination came over his mind ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... that one and only one species out of 3,000,000 should develop into man, that it certainly was not the case. All had the same start, many had similar environments. Yet witness the motly products of evolution: Man, ape, elephant, skunk, scorpion, lizard, lark, toad, lobster, louse, flea, amoeba, hookworm, and countless microscopic animals; also, the palm, lily, melon, maize, mushroom, thistle, cactus, microscopic bacilli, etc. All developed from one germ, all in some way related. Mark well the difference ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... goes by the name of "hellweed," or "devil's guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, "ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." "If boiled," says Hill, "with a little ginger, the dodder in decoction works briskly as a purge. Also, the thievish herb, when bruised and applied externally to scrofulous ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... might go into business, as did the poor weavers of Toad Lane, with their sack of oatmeal, firkin of butter, a little sugar and flour," said Jack laughingly. "A fair division of labor. The men of Yerbury shall provide work, and the women shall train the inefficient how and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... dis place looks as good to me as it did," he remarked. "Dose yaps wid de toad stabbers could hike up on top o' dese cliffs an' make it a case o' 'thence by carriages to Calvary' for ours ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and devils met for the celebration of blasphemous and obscene rites in an assembly known as the Witches' Sabbath. To enable themselves to ride to the meeting-place on broomsticks, the witches procured a communion wafer, applied a toad to it, burned it, mingled its ashes with the blood of an infant, the powdered bones of a hanged man and certain herbs. The meeting then indulged in a parody of the mass, for, so the grave doctors taught, as Christ had his sacraments the devil had his "unsacraments" ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... old chair by the fireside, and went to a table covered with a green cloth so worn that you could count the threads. A huge toad sat dozing there beside a cage inhabited by a ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... were dingy and expensive, the pump-house had no director, the nobility had haughtily withdrawn from such vulgar entertainments as the city now alone afforded. The famous and choleric physician, Dr. Radcliffe, in revenge for some slight he had endured, had threatened to "throw a toad into King Bladud's Well," by writing a pamphlet against the medicinal ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the door last evening, a great toad hopped up on the door-step. A bug flew along, and he caught it. He looks very ugly; but he ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various
... with the specialized organs and functions of sex, let this illumination from on high cast that devil out of your cosmos forever. And if you turn away with soul offended from even 'the slimy gendering of the toad,' you dishonor God who once knew no higher creative formula and still blesses it ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... something dying. To the happiest walking there would come strange sinkings of the heart, unaccountable premonitions of overhanging doom. There the least superstitious would start at the sight of a toad, and come upon three magpies at once not without fear. Over all was a breath of imminent disaster, a look of sorrow from which there was no escape. It was not many yards away from a merry high-road, but ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen I had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my body rested, my brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... toad'll get a rush of blood to his head!" cried Leslie, as Alfaretta threw her recent "treasure" ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... the whole four, or at least the whole three, were; first, in being together; after that, in all things besides. Never was tea so refreshing, or bread and butter so sweet, or the song of birds so delightsome. When the birds had gone to their nests, the cricket and grasshopper and tree toad and katy-did, and nameless other songsters, kept up a concert—nature's own, in delicious harmony with woods and flowers, and summer breezes and evening light. Ellen's cup of enjoyment was running over. From one beautiful thing to another her eye wandered, from one joy to another her thoughts ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... said Mr. Croaker, the elder and richer of the two, "I must not let that young scapegrace Jumper get the better of me. A pretty joke indeed that he should think of the beautiful Miss Leapfrog, he who is not worth a rap, and is as ugly as a toad." ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... call them, are very different animals from the "turpissima bestia" that accompanies the itinerant organ-grinder or grins in the Zoological Gardens of London. Milton has made his hero, Satan, assume the forms of a cormorant, a toad, and a serpent, and I cannot see that this creation of semi-divine Vanars, or monkeys, is more ridiculous ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... arrows whetted on stones, the lower halves of which are well-furnished with wings of the hue of parrots' feather and the upper halves, of well-tempered steels? [46] Whose is this excellent sword irresistible, and terrible to adversaries, with the mark of a toad on it, and pointed like a toad's head? [47] Cased in variegated sheath of tiger-skin, whose is this large sword of excellent blade and variegated with gold and furnished with tinkling bells? Whose is this handsome scimitar of polished blade and golden hilt? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord Holdernesse for a spy; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was declared innocent, and the penitent secretary of state made him the amende honorable of a dinner in form. About ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Frank; "and I can tell you that Mrs. Paget (no offence to her nephew) is one of those dear retailers of all descriptions of news, that would worm a secret out of a toad in a stone, and Louis hasn't ready wit enough to ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... your father is dreaming of!" she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a nunnery with ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... broke forth again, the hag had vanished. There was only seen in the dull pool, the water-rat swimming through the rank sedges; only in the forest, the grey wings of the owl, fluttering heavily across the glades; only in the grass, the red eyes of the bloated toad. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tale is the Basque legend of the orphans, Izar (seven years old) and Lanoa (nine years old), and their adventures with Satan and the witches,—how Izar cured the Princess and killed the great toad which was the cause of her complaint, and how Lanoa defied Satan to his face, meeting death by his action, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... in Shakespeare's time, that in the head of an old toad was to be found a stone, or pearl, to which great virtues were ascribed. This stone has been often sought, but nothing has been found more than accidental or perhaps morbid ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... original reporter using the term "the Island." Natives would know that the definite article could only refer to their own locality! The stone is an effect of denudation and is similar to other isolated sandstone rocks scattered about the south of England, e.g., the "Toad" Rock at Tunbridge Wells and "Great upon Little" near West Heathly in Sussex. A short distance away is a smaller mass called the "Puckstone." The derivation of the larger rock is probably Haligstane—Holy Stone. So difficult is it to contemplate ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... bridegroom swelled with rage like a toad, so that his food remained sticking in his throat; however, he put a good face on the matter and swallowed the pill, intending to make the reckoning and settle the balance afterwards. But when the tables were removed, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It was n't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,— Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, Of the Screeching Woman ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this buzzin' round about young Tom?" queried one of the men in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, 'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n knee-high to a hop-toad!" ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... an artist, musician, scribbler, no matter what, ridiculed as a tuft-hunter,—seeking the great, and so forth,—before you join in the laugh, ask some great man's son, with a pedigree that dates from the Ark, 'Are you not a toad-eater too? Do you want political influence; do you stand contested elections; do you curry and fawn upon greasy Sam the butcher and grimy Tom the blacksmith for a vote? Why? useful to your career, necessary to your ambition? Aha! is it meaner to curry and fawn upon white-handed women and elegant ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the name of liberty invoking the tyranny of terror! An assassin—shouting fraternity and committing fratricide! A libertine—claiming equality with the good, while ravishing the pure! A monster—part vulture, part toad—who, in the holy name of progress, makes our Country and our Cause revolting ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... moment in the hall of the New Cosmopolitan Club, Petro told himself that he would by and by reach Winifred Child. It was a hateful combination of circumstances; but finding her thus would be no worse than discovering a rare jewel in a toad's head. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... wind loves to hold His dreary revels, loud and cold, The nettle's bloom's his daily fare, The TOAD the guest most ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... she just took off all she had on. She is a dear "little Alice," and I call her by a great many pet names; sometimes she is "my rosebud," sometimes I say, "Come here, Mrs. Frizzlefits." When she is sick, it is always "darling," and when she is well and hopping about, it is "you precious little old toad." But they all mean the same thing. She likes to be my "old toad" just as much as my "rosebud," for she knows perfectly well, that they ...
— Baby Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... again turning to Mary Avenel, "if I do not pity you, lady, who, being of noble blood, are thus in a manner compelled to abide in the cottage of the ignorant, like the precious stone in the head of the toad, or like a precious garland on the brow of an ass.—But soft, what gallant have we here, whose garb savoureth more of the rustic than doth his demeanour, and whose looks seem more lofty ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... what it is," said Jack, laughing. "It's some kind of big frog or toad: they live in such marshy places as this, and they croak and make noises that seem to be ever so far-off, ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... Roland had a certain amount of nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then? Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was that toad. And all because a perfectly respectful admiration for the caoutchouc had led him to occupy a stage-box several nights in succession at the theater where the peerless Maraquita tied ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... to his feet, forgetful of his supposed paralysis. He leant on the back of the chair and stared doubtfully at Dr. Bull, as if the Doctor had been turned into a toad before his eyes. And indeed it was almost as great a ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of India, transformed by Ulin into a toad. "He[TN-14] was disenchanted by the dervise Shemshel'nar, the most "pious worshipper of Alla amongst all the sons of Asia." By prudence and piety, Misnar and his vizier, Horam, destroyed all the enchanters ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a jolly Dominican in his ear, "that toad's blood was never hot." It certainly looked like it. The ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... can tell,'" quoted Bertram, merrily. "Of course there ARE other things. If it were you, now, we'd only have to hunt up the special thing you happened to be collecting at the time, and that would be it: a snake, a lizard, a toad, or maybe a butterfly. You know you were always lugging those things home when you ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... had done that for his lordship to which his fortitude was inadequate. He was at least as cool, and as intrepid, as myself; and bowed to me with the utmost ease and civility. To return his bow was infinitely more repulsive than taking a toad in my hand: yet to forbear would have been a violation of the first principles of the behaviour of a gentleman. I therefore reluctantly and formally complied. I hope the reader remembers how earnestly I condemn this ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Toad hopped down the path until he met Wallie Woodpecker. "Willie Woodchuck is whittling because he has nothing better ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... several different sects of religion, but are mostly atheists; many of them believing, that if they lead good lives, they will be born again to great riches, and be made governors; whereas those who lead bad lives will be changed to some vile animal, as a frog or toad. They burn sacrifices every new moon, mumbling over certain prayers in a kind of chanting voice, tingling a small bell, which they ring aloud at the close of each prayer. When any of them of good account lies sick and like to die, they sacrifice ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... is engaged to his sister Eveline. Such a bright little girl, Smith! I know the whole family well. It's disgusting to see that brute with her. A toad and a dove, that's what they ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... front was hanging half a dozen inches from his skull. Mademoiselle Cormon raised her eyes, saw that skull in all its nudity, and lowered them, abashed. Du Bousquier cast upon the chevalier the most venomous look that toad ever darted on ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... coax coal coast coarse float foam goat gloam groan hoarse load loan loaf oak oar oats roast road roam shoal soap soar throat toad toast ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... I had some influence with the Foreign Secretary," said I, not telling him that the man actually dislikes me, and looks at me as if I were a toad. "Of course, he's Lord Mountstuart's cousin, and brother-in-law as well, and that makes him seem quite in the family, doesn't it? But it isn't as if I were really related to Lady Mountstuart. I was never sorry before that Di and I are only step-sisters—no, not a bit ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... ominous: but I think thou seemest not to be in so enterprising a way as formerly; and yet, merry or sad, thou seest a rake's neck is always in danger, if not from the hangman, from his own horse. But, 'tis a vicious toad, it seems; and I think thou shouldst never venture upon his back again; for 'tis a plaguy thing for rider and horse ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... extend great distances under ground, are plastered with the same kind of stucco. Captain Tuckey, in his expedition to the river Zaire, discovered ant-hills composed of similar materials to the above, but which, in shape, precisely resembled gigantic toad-stools, as high as a one-story house. In this part of Africa, they have the form of a mound. At the present day, when the community-principle is attracting so much attention, it would seem to be seriously worth while for the Fourierites to observe both the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... grains of barley per day, and turned out to browse on quartz rock and sage-bushes every night—I'd rather be a miserable little burro, kicked and cuffed by a Mariposa Chinaman—I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon in the city of Oakland, or a toad and feed upon the vapors of a dungeon at San Quentin—I'd rather be a lamp-post on the corner of Montgomery Street, San Francisco, and be leaned against, and hugged, and kissed alternately by every loafer out of the Montgomery saloon—I'd rather be any of these ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... since I began Roman History with Miss Heritage. Mucius Scaevola's the Salamander, because they're indifferent to fire, like he was—though Miss Heritage says it wouldn't be kind to try with Mucius. Numa Pompilius is the Blind-worm—he used to be Kaa—and the Toad has changed from Nobbles ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... infested with ants, as to threaten the destruction of the whole crop; which they did, first by perforating the skin, and afterwards eating their way into the fruit; and, after making several unsuccessful experiments to destroy them, it occurred to me that I had seen the toad feed on them. I accordingly put about half a dozen toads into the pit, and, in the course of a few days, scarcely an ant was to be ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... glad that I have the knack Of singing clack! clack! clack! If you wish to be happy, just follow my track, Take this for a motto, this for a code, Sing 'winter, winter, winter is back!' Leave care to a toad, and live ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... toad-flax. 459 Sudden and frequent origin in the wild state. Origin in the experiment-garden. Law of repeated mutations. Probable origin of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... the adder, taking the fat, and boiling it; the result is a clear oil, which never thickens in the coldest weather. One of these reptiles on being killed and cut open was found to contain the body of a full-grown toad. The old belief that the young of the viper enters its mouth for refuge still lingers. The existence of adders in the woods here seems so undoubted that strangers should be a little careful if they leave the track. Viper's bugloss, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... has a plain general tone but a suggestion of other colors which give it a blurred and mottled appearance which is singularly disagreeable. Another is plain in color but has a lumpy effect like a toad's back, and is really quite awful. Others are metallic papers, and there is a heavy paper embossed in self color with a conventional design which is apt to have a shining surface. Papers with dashes and little flecks of gold should be avoided, for ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... to interfere with my pupil. He agreed to this, but either he selected a stupid subject, or his mode of teaching was not good, for he made wonderfully little progress. For a week he was trying to teach his pupil Tommy Toad, as he called him, three letters of the alphabet, and at the end of the time he could not tell B from C. Mr Talbot took care also that we should not be idle, and kept us knotting and splicing and doing all sorts of work aloft. We were ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... shipping the Professor in the mummy case underneath, and well out of sight. Cockatoo had come down stream with The Firefly, and in this way had not been discovered. Throughout that long day the miserable Braddock had crouched like a toad in its hole, trembling at every sound of pursuit, as he knew that the whole of the village was looking for him. But Cockatoo had hidden him well in the case, in the lid of which holes had been bored. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... with regard to the French Revolution, as having been the great cause of degeneration in murder. "Very soon, sir," he used to say, "men will have lost the art of killing poultry: the very rudiments of the art will have perished!" In the year 1811 he retired from general society. Toad-in-the-hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed him from his wonted haunts—nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. By the side of the main conduit his listless length at noontide he would stretch, and pore upon ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a toad on a hot skillet," he confessed to Davis. "This thing of never knowing what minute Soapy will send me his leaden compliments ain't any picnic. Wisht it ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face—when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird—Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... physician, of the highest character and standing, showed me the photograph of a small boy, some three or four years old, who had a very respectable little tail, which would have passed muster on a pig, and would have made a frog or a toad ashamed of himself. I have never heard what became of the little boy, nor have I looked in the books or journals to find out if there are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys may have this additional ornament to their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shepherd, who saw her there, told the village, "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb—the paltriest I ever saw—of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to let me do it?" he demanded at length of the boy. "You ungrateful little toad. You can give me that ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... from out the river, Bones of toad and sea-calf's liver; Swine's flesh fatten'd on her brood, Wolf's tooth, hare's foot, weasel's blood. Skull of ape and fierce baboon, And panther spotted like the moon; Feathers of the horned owl, Daw, pie, and other fatal fowl. Fruit ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he would show her how a Russian gentleman avenged himself. He, Storri, hated the Harleys. Mr. Harley had cheated him; Dorothy had laughed at him; her lover, that Richard, bah! he had even threatened Storri. Chastise him? Could a nobleman chastise a toad—a reptile? No; there was a debt ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... elastic tissue was next procured from the visceral cavity of a toad, and moderately sized, as well as very small, bits were placed on five leaves. After 24 hrs. two of the bits [page 103] were completely liquefied; two others were rendered transparent, but not quite liquefied; ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... to the picknic old Mrs. Bolton had had a spell and the minister and Decon Sawyer was lifting her into Miss Susan Parkinsons caryall to drive her home. sum feller had throwed a teeny little bull toad in her lap. huh i shood think that was a prety thing to have a spell for. i never see ennyone have a spell. i wish i had got there in time to see it. Beany sed it was grate fun and elvrybody ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... wide, and short. While I was looking down to pick up some of the curious beans I have mentioned, I saw the big head of a creature projecting from a hole. For a moment I thought it was a large serpent, but presently out hopped a huge toad in pursuit of some little animal which had incautiously ventured near its den. Presently it gave sound to a most extraordinary loud snoring kind of bellow, when True dashed forward and caught it. I rescued the creature before his teeth had crushed it. On recovering its liberty, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself stubbornly why this girl, this type of girl, dainty, frank-eyed, clean-hearted as he felt instinctively that she was, was making this trip to that dirty town which straddled the state border line like an evil, venomous toad and sneered in its ugly defiant fashion at the peace officers of two states. He was trying to see what the reason could be that carried her through this little-travelled country to the house of such a man as not only Buck Thornton but every one in this end of the cattle country knew Henry ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... endeavored at another time to bring up a snake and a toad in the way they should go (this time in an empty hen-coop); but the snake certainly did depart from it, and astonished the family much by gliding into the kitchen with the unhappy toad in his mouth. Poor Gabrielle's ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... grubbing up in that ditch? "I am not grubbing up anything," said Jacko, "but here are a lot of black creatures, lively enough when you stir them up; I suppose they must be tadpoles." Tadpoles, Jack, unquestionably, but are they the young of the toad or the frog? Let me see. Well, it is not easy to say which in their present stage, a tadpole is so like a tadpole, whether the young of frog or toad. If you had found the eggs, which you might have done earlier in the year, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... silent life that, through long years, the desert had taught to endure its hardships was there—the lizard, horned- toad, lean jack-rabbit, gaunt coyote, and their kind. Only the hard growth that the ages had evolved dotted the floor of the Basin in the near distance—the salt-bush and greasewood, with here and there clumps ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... feature of interest at Rusthall Common is the group of rocks, of which the largest, the Toad Rock, bears a most singular resemblance to the reptile from which it is named. The High Rocks, situated further on, and just in the county of Sussex, are also very remarkable, rising from 30 to 60 feet ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... be said of this war, as the master mind of all the ages said of adversity, that "its uses are sweet," even though they be as a precious jewel shining in the head of an ugly and venomous toad. While the world-war has brutalized men, it has as a moral paradox added immeasurably to the sum of human nobility. Its epic grandeur is only beginning to reveal itself, and in it the human soul has reached the high water marker of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... as I grew older, and wandered farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in my trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well, and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... where the field mouse and the toad Have burrowed; where, beside the road, The grasshopper and katydid All winter have been safely hid; And when the bumblebee will come A-booming back with pleasant hum? April can tell you, for 'tis she Opens the door ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... and women are allowed to eat anything, and there are very few things that they do not eat. Among the few exceptions are a species of toad, and the young of the wombat, when very small, and before the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... thought that always brought me back to hard ground, and that was Ivery. I do not think I hated anybody in the world but him. It was his relation to Mary that stung me. He had the insolence with all his toad-like past to make love to that clean and radiant girl. I felt that he and I stood as mortal antagonists, and the thought pleased me, for it helped me to put some honest detestation into my job. Also I was going to win. Twice I had failed, but the third time I should succeed. It had been like ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... elfin cast a glance around, As he lighted down from his courser toad, Then round his breast his wings he wound, And close to the river's brink he strode; He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer, Above his head his arm he threw, Then tossed a tiny curve in air, And headlong plunged in the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper |
