"Vulture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a preservative against lightning and tempest and against the assaults of devils. A stone on which is engraved a long-bearded man sitting on a plough, with a bending in his neck, and four men lying down, and holding in his hand a fox and a vulture, this, suspended about the neck, enables you to find treasures. If you find a dove, with a branch of olive in its mouth, engraved in pyrites, and mount it in a silver ring, and carry it with you, everybody will invite ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... only daughter rears, who, long-wished-for, at length inherits the ancestral wealth, his name duly set down in the attested tablets; and casting afar the impious hopes of the baffled next-of-kin, scares away the vulture from the whitened head; nor so much does any dove-mate rejoice in her snow-white consort (though, 'tis averred, more shameless than most in continually plucking kisses with nibbling beak) as thou dost, though woman is especially inconstant. But thou alone didst ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... claws into thee some day, thou foolish lad," she said, lifting her lean vulture-like ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... land animals, though on account of the scales and spines of the former the likeness may not be easily traced. But the common names used by the fishermen often indicate these resemblances, —as, for instance, Sea-Vulture, Sea-Eagle, Cat-Fish, Flying-Fish, Sea-Porcupine, Sea-Cow, Sea-Horse, and the like. In the branch of Mollusks, also, the same superficial analogies are found. In the lowest class of this division of the Animal Kingdom there is a group so similar to the Polyps, that, until recently, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... called—though only behind his back—yet it might better have been Vulture. Big and gross, with thick unstable lips and stubby, hairy fingers, more than once he and his motley gang of hi-jackers had painted a crimson splash across the far corners of the frontiers, and daubed it to the tortured groans of the crews of honest ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... at the extremity its diameter was perhaps three inches; in the middle rather less than half as much. The grey central piece, larger and darker at either end, suggested the thought of the bare neck of a vulture. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... to be a mere irrational non- entity, because, like those things which are admitted to be positive existences, i.e. earth, and so on, it is proved by consciousness not invalidated by any means of proof. For the formation of immediate judgments such as 'here a hawk flies, and there a vulture,' implies our being conscious of ether as marking the different places of the flight of the different birds. Nor is it possible to hold that Space is nothing else but the non-existence (abhava) of earth, and so on; for this view collapses as soon as set forth in definite ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... engaged themselves with that, while we sat under the rather scanty shade of a small thorn tree and had lunch. Here we had a favourable chance to observe that very common, but always wonderful phenomenon, the gathering of the carrion birds. Within five minutes after the stoop of the first vulture above the carcass, the sky immediately over that one spot was fairly darkened with them. They were as thick as midges-or as ducks used to be in California. All sizes were there from the little carrion crows to the great dignified vultures ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... dress pocket and retired from the room. Once securely out of sight, she eagerly began her scrutiny of the ill-fated little book that had fallen so mysteriously into her possession. Record after record was read with greedy eye. Soon her eye rested upon the name, "Leah Mordecai." No vulture ever devoured its unfortunate prey with more rapacity that did this wicked woman the contents that followed, day after day. Her eye gleamed with delight, and her jewelled hands trembled for joy, as she turned ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the breath of love and peace abroad on the air to-night? Dared a vile vulture of sin to brush with polluting wing over the vines and flowers of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... on it and wondering what it could mean, he heard the sweeping of wings above him, and looking up he saw a huge vulture with open claws swooping down upon him. In a moment he seized the egg and flung it at the bird with all his might, and lo and behold! instead of the ugly monster the most beautiful girl he had ever seen stood before the astonished eyes of ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... the last green wall of the garden on to a sort of towing path looking on the river and a wooden island opposite. There, indeed, he saw a lean, dark figure with a stoop almost like that of a vulture, a posture well known in the law courts as that of Sir John Harker, the Attorney-General. His face was lined with headwork, for alone among the three idlers in the garden he was a man who had made his own way; ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... sick. What Simmy hinted at was the vulture work among the dead and the wounded too enfeebled to protect themselves from being plundered. He saw Kirby's lips set into ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... Prince's freend?' for she too, though with other feelings, had adopted the general opinion respecting Waverley. 'I daur ye to touch him,' spreading abroad her long and muscular fingers, garnished with claws which a vulture might have envied. 'I'll set my ten commandments in the face o' the first loon that lays ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... loomed in the distance, moving insensibly down the long, glaring corridor, a sinister figure, suggesting in the silence of his oncoming the motionless flight of a vulture. Well within my field of sight he overtook them and, with a lack of preliminary greeting that suggested supreme intimacy, walked beside them. I stood for some moments—for some minutes, and then hastened after them. I was going to do something. After a time I found de ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... bound to the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... well known that the simile of the vulture and the lamb, which occurs in the address of Rolla to the Peruvians, had been previously employed by Mr. Sheridan, in this speech; and it showed a degree of indifference to criticism,—which criticism, it must be owned, not unfrequently ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... present to you an argument," continued the baronet, "which unswervingly follows my present conception. Long experience of this wicked world—by which I mean that particular kind of vulture-like humanity which preys upon better men than itself—enables me to assume that you are without question a blackmailer, a bad blackmailer, and a blackmailer ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... of the void That hid them from his bended bow, Shall crawl from caverns overjoyed, Jackal and snake and carrion crow. And perched above the vulture's eggs, Reversed upon its hideous head, A blue-faced ape shall wave its legs To tell the world ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... out Through the Looking-glass, and every one who has ever read that pretty work of poetic fancy will remember the ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter. It was parodied in The Light Green under the title of "The Vulture and the Husbandman." This poem described the agonies of a viva-voce examination, and it derived its title from two facts of evil omen—that the Vulture plucks its victim, and that the Husbandman makes his living ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a standard; as also it may not. They have striking characteristics of their own, and have been found very useful by poets and other people who have to wander off the main subject to make plain what they mean. The owl is the wiseacre of Nature, the vulture is a vile harpy, and the eagle is the embodiment of everything great and mighty, and glorious and free, and swooping and catoptrical. There is very little to say against the eagle, except that he looks a deal the better a long way off, like an impressionist picture ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... him, she was far more to be pitied than I. Lonely she must be—lonely as I—for who was there to understand and love her? Bitterly too by this time she must have suffered, for the dove can never be at peace in the bosom of the vulture, or cease to hate the carrion of which he must ever carry about with him at least the disgusting memorials. Alas! I too had been her enemy, and had cried out against her; but now I would love her more and better than ever! Oh! if I knew but something I could do ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... a vulture whose claws are hard to unloose from the vitals of the spirit, I think it is jealousy. I found it had got hold of me, and was tearing the life out of me. I knew it in time. O sing praise to our King, you who know Him! ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... highest colour of passion. But I would not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr. John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... insisted that Prometheus, in order to perform a great service to humanity, stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. For this crime against the authority of the gods, he was chained to a rock to suffer the torture of the vulture who pecked at his vitals. Aeschylus has made the most of this old legend in his great drama of Prometheus Bound. Nearly every tribe or nation has some tradition regarding the origin of fire. Because of its mystery and its economic value, it ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... principally on fish, but also greedily devours insects. He also picks up small animals or animal substances with which he meets, and, like the vulture, devours them even in a putrid condition. He walks well and quickly, swims bouyantly, lying in the water like an air bubble, and dives with facility, but to no ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the huge brown rocks which are strewn about become so hot that one can scarcely bear to touch them, and the sand scorches the feet. It was already too hot to walk, so we rode on donkeys, some way up the valley—where a vulture floating far in the blue overhead was the only other visitor—till we came to an enormous boulder polished by centuries of action of sun and sand. Here Ali halted, saying that the tomb was under ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... its best with this bird, representing it as an immense vulture or condor or as a reminiscence of the extinct dodo. But a Chinese myth, cited by Klaproth, well preserves its true character when it describes it as "a bird which in flying obscures the sun, and of whose quills are made water-tuns." See ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... side, and lighting another cigarette settled himself more comfortably on the warm ground. For a time he watched the solitary sentinel sitting motionless on his horse at no great distance from the oasis. Then a vulture winging its slow heavy way across the heavens claimed his attention and he followed it with his eyes until it passed beyond his vision. He was too lazy and too comfortable to turn his head. He lay listening to the shrill hum of countless insect life, smoking cigarette after cigarette ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... understood to be a man in a black petticoat. We have had a nightly accompaniment of a much larger procession, though, calling themselves 'Skellingtons,' otherwise the 'Skeletons,' an army of low women and roughs; who live vulture lives on this poor, soiled, grimy, forgotten world. Thank God, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... to disturb the repose of a Turk on his, is to re-awaken him to a painful sense of the miseries of life. The one nation at rest is as much tormented as Prometheus, chained to his rock, with the vulture feeding on him; the other in motion is as uncomfortable as Ixion tied to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... talks beautifully; but I regret to say that I do not understand a word of its language. One summer we had several fine specimens in the great flying-cage, with the big and showy waterfowl, condor, griffon vulture, ravens and crows. One of those magpies often came over to the side of the cage to talk to me, and as I believe, make complaints. Whether he complained about his big and bulky cagemates, or the keepers, or me, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the cattle are gone, that scarce a cow is left to give drink to a motherless babe. He asks for maidens also, but if he took those he seeks we should have none left for our young men to marry. And why is this so? It is because the vulture, Lobengula, has picked us to the bone; yes, while we are yet alive he has torn the flesh from us. Year by year his soldiers have stolen and killed, till at last nothing is left of us. And now he seeks what we have ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... Michel de la Foret, soldier and Huguenot, must have been ill at ease—the eagle with the vulture's wing. What ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... enough. For there, in the tortured imaginings of his pain-constricted brain, came the ugly black bird again, shrieking horribly and perching itself on his chest. Its huge claws raked his ribs, and its dripping beak fastened itself on his throat. Now he recognized the species for what it was: a vulture, a bird of prey, unwilling to be robbed of its Earth victim; trying to pinion him to the planet with the strength of its anger. Its great wings flapped, flapped, flapped, beating against his body, flooding ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow;... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P. R. Geog. S. ix. 1887, p. 219), writes: "Megaloperdrix ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... I'd have no son Pounce on these treasures like a vulture; Nay, give them half My epitaph And let them share ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... and suck me down; to go into the swamp naked-handed and wrest from it treasures that bring me books and clothing, and I like enough of a fight for things that I always remember how I got them. I even enjoy seeing a canny old vulture eyeing me as if it were saying: 'Ware the sting of the rattler, lest I pick your bones as I did old Limber's.' I like sufficient danger to put an edge on life. This is so tame. I should have loved it when all the homes were cabins, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... and an unmolested passage through their territory. If they refused, we would force them to grant it, as we did the Masai. 'Look here'—I took a repeating-rifle in my hand—'this thing hits at any distance;' and I gave it to one of our best marksmen and pointed to a vulture which sat upon a tree a little more than three hundred yards off. The shot was heard, and the vulture fell down mortally wounded. The Wa-Kikuyu showed signs of being about to run away, although they had occasionally ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... largess of their praise is flung With bounty, rare and regal; —Is it because the vulture fears No longer the dead eagle? Nay, rather far accept it thus,— An homage true and tender, As soldier unto soldier's worth,— As brave to ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... carrion, like the vulture. Its throat is very large, and it will greedily eat everything that comes in its way. In the swamps and plains around Khartoom, on the Nile, are immense flocks of marabous, and they are so daring as to come to the slaughter-houses on the outskirts of the city in search of food, and ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... aged woman crouching on the snowy ground, with her arms clasped about her knees, and so tattered that her red elbows came through her tattered sleeves. A few ragged locks of grey hung about her long, scraggy, red, and vulture-like neck. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... in a sack, and yet had gold and bank-notes hidden in the crevices of the walls and in cracked jugs and tea-pots; of an old apple woman in whose house a fortune was found wrapped up in little scraps of paper; of "Vulture Hopkins" and "Blewbury Jones" and many others whose riches after their death were found hidden in strange places. While Wegg read, Mr. Boffin would pretend to get tremendously excited about his ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of night, there dwell Spirits of Evil, the never-resting, vagrant, home-destroying guests, who enter unbidden into the human soul! Hark, the rustling of their raven-hued plumage! They take wing, they fly aloft; 't is the shriek of the vulture, swooping down upon the ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... and passing-out of the Sun through the Gates of the East and the Gates of the West,—by the Vulture of Gold and White Lotus and the countless virtues of Nagaya, may peace ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... With the assistance of Ajatasattu, Devadatta then tried to compass the death of the Buddha. First he hired assassins, but they were converted as soon as they approached the sacred presence. Then he rolled down a rock from the Vulture's peak with the intention of crushing the Buddha, but the mountain itself interfered to stop the sacrilege and only a splinter scratched the Lord's foot. Then he arranged for a mad elephant to be let loose ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... did not go high, which I was glad of; that the vulture, who sells them, may not be more enriched than could be helped. There was a whole-length of Sir Henry Sidney, which I should have liked, but it went for fifteen guineas. Thus ends half the glory of Penshurst! Not one of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... more with Sorrow meekly cope; In phrensy then their fate accuse; In madness do those fearful deeds That seem to add but Guilt to Woe? Alas! the breast that inly bleeds Hath nought to dread from outward blow: Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss.[ej] Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now To thee, old man, my deeds appear: 1160 I read abhorrence on thy brow, And this too was I born to bear! 'Tis true, that, like that bird of prey, With havock have I marked my way: But this was taught me by the dove, To die—and know no second love. This lesson yet hath man to learn, Taught ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... similar import seemed to rise up from the lidless coffin before us. It was no brother mortal that lay at our feet, softly folded in the embraces of "Mother Earth," but a poor scarecrow, gibbeted for ages on this bare rock, like a dead Prometheus; the vulture, frost, gnawing for ever on his bleaching relics, and yet eternally ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... began to grope among a number of things that were thrown in a confused heap at the back of the shop. While in this attitude he looked so gaunt and grim that he reminded me of an aged vulture stooping over carrion, and yet there was something pitiable about him too. In a way I was sorry for him; a poor half-witted wretch, whose life had been full of such gall and wormwood. What a different fate was his ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... this dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look a fool! Still, it's ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... come prepar'd. I'll set upon you accoutred. I'll come furnish'd with a sharp Stomach; do you take Care that you have enough to satisfy a Vulture. I'll prepare my Belly and whet my Teeth; do you look to it, to get enough ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... ridiculous or sublime, which kept her going,—that they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack behind them to make extinction sure. All, except, perhaps, Miletus Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one. But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so dated and scheduled ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... staple of their food. The meat was procured from the graves in the villages they passed through. When Ram Nath was thoroughly educated in this rank the Sadhus deserted him. Since then he had been living on human carrion only, roaming about the country like a hungry vulture. He cannot eat cooked food, and therefore gets two seers of raw meat from the State every day. It is also reported that the Maharaja has now prohibited his being given anything but cooked food with a view to ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... had seen since crossing the Zoji La. Lower down there were a few more, then stunted specimens of the pencil cedar, and the mountains began to show a shade of green on their lower slopes. Butterflies appeared also, and a vulture, a grand bird on the wing, hovered ominously over us for some miles, and was succeeded by an equally ominous raven. On the excellent bridle-track cut on the face of the precipices which overhang the Bhaga, there is in nine miles only one spot in which ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... understood his drift she met him more than half- way. She was vulture-like in her greed, and with a full understanding between them the two conspired to use Max only so long and so ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... brought some relief to the starving inhabitants. For as each animal was left behind, the officers, looking back, might see first one, then another furtive figure emerge from the bush and pounce on the body like a vulture; and in many cases before life was extinct the famished natives were ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... they watched, a vulture came sailing slowly through the blue ether, and circled nearer and nearer; and off on the horizon was another—and still another, circling ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... chorus): The vulture her carrion swallows, Returns to his vomit the dog. In the slough of uncleanliness wallows The he-goat, and revels the hog. Men are wise with their schools and their teachers, Men are just with their creeds and their priests; Yet, in spite of their ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near them at the roulette table. "Wasn't she the image of a disappointed vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women look to you like animals? ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... the distance there was a great vulture winging its way towards the fallen gnu; and, directly after, another and another came into sight, sailing heavily along upon ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... have been and still are impleaded in Court Christian—these particulars, I say, being recapitulated and set forth in terrible array, by the rector, excited in the whole parish so much dread of the rapacious vulture, who was coming with such a swoop upon them, that high and low, young and old, rich and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the eagle in size, and some of its habits; but it is so very different from it in many ways, that there is little danger of confusing the two together: the greatest distinction between them is, that the head of the vulture is either quite naked, or covered only with a short down, while the eagle's is well feathered. This is the chief difference in appearance, but in their habits there is a much greater. Instead of flying over hills and valleys in pursuit of living game, the vultures only search ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... a bird in the air. "Oh, dear! what if it should be a vulture?" thought he, trembling in every joint. "Oh, if I were only once more under my good old mother's wing! Oh! how I wish ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... chiefly as a preventive against ague in the months between the dry and wet seasons, when the disease prevails. When a dose is required, a small quantity of the paste is dried and pulverised on a flat shell, and the powder, then drawn up into both nostrils at once through two vulture quills secured together by cotton thread. The use of Parica was found by the early travellers amongst the Omaguas, a section of the Tupis who formerly lived on the Upper Amazons, a thousand miles distant from the homes of the Mauhes and Muras. This community ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at his heel, descended the stairs,—his cheeks swollen and purple with intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture's. There was a still pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot. (Or Hanriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shifts and miserable falsifications whereby the birds of prey thrive on the flesh and blood of hapless pigeons. Now the dovecotes were fluttered by a new destroyer—a gentlemanly vulture, whose suave accents and perfect manners were fatal to the unwary. Henceforth Horatio Cromie Nugent Paget flourished and fattened upon the folly of his fellow-men. As promoter of joint-stock companies that never saw the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... piece of it by four o'clock, though it would have puzzled a European to find any use for such rubbish. The itinerant mender of slippers was hard at work with three young lads, and I never saw any one of the party idle. Hawks and corbies fluttered over the butcher's ground, and I noticed a vulture in the deep vault of the sky. Pariah dogs would clear every bit of refuse from the ground before another day dawned, and in their nasty fashion would serve their country, for the weather was very hot and the odours were overpowering. Flies covered all unprotected meat until it ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... of this year (1776) the Bay of Fundy was so infested with pirates and picaroons that the war vessels Vulture, Hope and Albany were ordered around from Halifax. They were not entirely successful in their endeavor to furnish protection, for the privateers frequently managed to steal past the large ships in the night and in fogs and continued ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... say those words of mine unto the wicked-minded, deceitful, and unrighteous Suyodhana, who is an embodiment of sin, who is wedded to guile, and whose behaviour is exceedingly wicked. Thou shalt have to dwell in the stomach of a vulture or in Hastinapura. O scum of human kind, I shall assuredly fulfil the vow I have made in the midst of the assembly. I swear in the name of Truth, slaying Dussasana in battle, I shall quaff his life-blood! Slaying also thy (other) brothers, I shall smash thy own thighs. Without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... doorstep and saw the Greeks piously and zealously attending to the divine command to spoil the Egyptians. Eight months ago a Greek bought up corn at 60 piastres the ardeb (he follows the Coptic tax-gatherer like a vulture after a crow), now wheat is at 170 piastres the ardeb here, and the fellah has paid 3.5 per cent. a month besides. Reckon the profit! Two men I know are quite ruined, and have sold all they had. The cattle disease forced them to borrow at these ruinous rates, and now alas, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... will jest jump to the "Age of Iron" or to the "Secrets of the Tomb," or "The Eagle and the Vulture," or "Washington and Lafayette," or "Charity"—a good-lookin' creeter she wuz—she could think of other children besides her own; or mebby it will jump right over onto the "Indian Buffalo Hunt"—a horse a-rarin' right up to git rid of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... on both political birds. Neither is a true eagle. They have talons but nothing of the noble air proper to the king of birds. The German bird is not an eagle but a vulture; and he is in a sorry plight, with torn and ruffled feathers, dishevelled, dripping blood. He is disappointed, angry, soured, and unhappy. Yet he is straightforward about it. He makes no attempt to disguise his feelings, but glares at the other ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... which are not climbers, the hooks on the bamboo may have arisen from unknown laws of growth, and have been subsequently taken advantage of by the plant undergoing further modification and becoming a climber. The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally looked at as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing any such inference, when we see that the skin on the head of the clean-feeding male ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Talegalla lathami, Gould, called the Brush Turkey (from its frequenting the brushes), Wattled Turkey and Wattled Talegalla (from its fleshy wattles), and sometimes, simply, Talegalla. By Latham it was mistaken for a Vulture, and classed by him as the New Holland Vulture. ('General History of Birds,' 1821, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians call a zazzera. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were necessary to control some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, and its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we cannot but picture ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... her influence known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone. I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song! She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except the instinctive ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... or golden vulture), when on the wing, is one of the most specious and imposing of birds. Its flight in the upper regions of the air is really sublime, extending its immense wings, and wheeling slowly and majestically to and fro, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... female, and sometimes shares with her the duty of incubation. This is done by the male wood-pigeon, missel-thrush, blue martin, the buzzard, stone-curlew, curlew, dottrel, the sandpiper, common gull, black-coated gull, kittiwake, razorbill, puffin, storm-petrel, the great blue heron and the black vulture. Among these birds it is usual for the family duties to be performed quite irrespective of sex, and the parent who is free takes the task of feeding the one who is occupied. As soon as one family is reared many birds at once burden themselves with another. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the spikes on the palm may at first have been developed for this object, and subsequently have been improved and taken advantage of by the plant, as it underwent further modification and became a climber. The naked skin on the head of a vulture is generally considered as a direct adaptation for wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid matter; but we should be very cautious in drawing ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... blue expanse lies the pretty Greek town, with its balconied houses and masses of foliage rising in terraces one above the other. Above it towers a ruined castle, whence the Genoese, in their days of supremacy, scanned with vulture-gaze the sweep of sea, prepared to pounce upon any hapless vessel wind-driven into these waters. It was Sunday when our travellers arrived, and the whole population were holiday making on the green shore or greener heights. Groups ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... says Fray Antonio Agapida, "had by this time closely clipped the right wing of the Moorish vulture." In other words, most of the strong fortresses along the western frontier of Granada had fallen beneath the Christian artillery. The army now lay encamped before the town of Moclin, on the frontier of Jaen, one of the most ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... that as he thought this he continued to keep eye on Shagpat, and the hunger that was in him passed, and became a ravenous vulture that flew from him and singled forth Shagpat as prey; and there was no help for it but in he must go and state his case to Shagpat, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Sikkim, says in the "Sikkim Gazetteer" that in no part of the world of an equal area are birds more profusely represented in species. The birds may not be so numerous as in other parts, but they are more varied. Between five and six hundred species are represented, varying from the great vulture known as the lammergeyer, which is 9 1/2 feet across the outstretched wing, down to the tiny flower-pecker, barely exceeding 3 inches from the end of its beak to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... himself with his hands upon the edge of the coffin, he fastened his vulture-like eyes upon the closed eyelids of Rotgier ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... motionless; From the river stream it spread away The space of half a rood; The surface had the hue of clay And the scent of human blood; The trees and the herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul, And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl; The water was as dark and rank As ever a Company pumped, And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank Grew rotten while it jumped; And bold was he who thither came At midnight, man or boy, For the place was cursed ...
— English Satires • Various
... "jolly" late dinners and blithely-circulating decanter, with literary men, that I found it almost impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the tormentor quitted ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... she looked like a woman of sixty, and yet her husband said she was just thirty-seven. Their water is strong with alkali, and this and the prairie wind (combined with a something deep down in her own make-up) have made her like a vulture, lean and scrawny and dry. I stared at that hard line of jaw and cheekbone and wondered how long ago the soft curves were there, and if those overworked hands had ever been pretty, and if that flat back had ever ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... in my locks; I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. Seven blackened corpses before me lie, In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky. I have watched them through the burning day, And driven the vulture and raven away; And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. And when the shadows of twilight came, I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame, And heard at my side his stealthy tread, But aye at my shout the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... them out of their wits. Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey. This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... blessed Shaka was at the assembly on Vulture's Peak, there came the heavenly king, who offered the Buddha a golden-colored flower and asked him to preach the law. The Blessed One simply took the flower and held it in his hand, but said no word. No one in the whole assembly could tell what he meant. The ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... rubbed his fat hands. "So the time nears when we shall wring the vulture's neck? Ai, it is good! Umballa, the toad, who swells and swells as the days go by. Siva has guarded him well. The king picks him out of the gutter for a pretty bit of impudence, sends him afar to Umballa, where he learns to speak English, where he learns to wear shoes that button and stiff linen ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... One vulture will come to exchange old lamps for new, another to do a deal in magnetos, and a third, may be, to better himself in the matter of wheels. There will be some squabbling, and, when the work is done, the last state of that casualty will be worse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... are fools, is and has been so widely believed, that, to men of the stamp of my indignant reader, it has become a fact! But the end alone will reveal the beginning. Such a fool was Prometheus, with the vulture at his heart—but greater than Jupiter ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... world. In such solitude life becomes a dialogue of man with his own soul, and the internal colloquies render more bitter and intense the affections which have returned to the heart for want of nourishment in the world. Mournful colloquies and yet pleasing, where man is the suicidal vulture perpetually preying upon himself, and caressing the wound that drags him to the grave.... The first cause of his sorrow is Recanati: the intellect, capable of the universe, feels itself oppressed ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... cunning, restless eyes, combined perfectly to form the head of the mythological Harpy. It required little effort of the imagination to believe that her foul, bedraggled dress concealed the "wings and talons of the vulture." Being still unsteady from her night's debauch, she leaned against the young man, and when he shrank in loathing away, she, to annoy him, clasped him in her arms, to the uproarious merriment of the miscellaneous crowd that is ever present at a police court. Haldane broke ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... teeth, as a shout of indignant, yet joyous ferocity broke from the crowded ships thus hailed. "The curse of all time be on him who draws the first native blood in sight of the altars and hearths of London! Hear me, thou with the vulture's blood-lust, and the peacock's vain joy in the gaudy plume! Hear me, Tostig, and tremble. If but by one word thou widen the breach between me and the King, outlaw thou enterest England, outlaw shalt thou depart—for earldom and broad lands; choose the bread of the stranger, and the weregeld ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... footsore in the midst of herds of respectable human brutes, slinking away from the eye of every policeman, pawning clothes for the price of a verminous bed, to lie awake all night knowing that I would be murdered by the vulture-faced degenerates sleeping in the same hovel, if they had caught ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... turkey buzzard (vulture) is the fittest emblem for murderous Dahome, so I should propose for Midian, now spoiled and wasted by the Wild Man, a broken handmill of basalt upon a ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... step she was taking. She fixed her gaze on that part where the lonely cottage was embowered, and she had a longing to see even a little whiff of smoke from Tulee's kitchen. But there was no sign of life save a large turkey-buzzard, like a black vulture, sailing gracefully over the tree-tops. The beloved sister, the faithful servant, the brother from whom she had once hoped so much, the patient animal that had borne her through so many pleasant paths, the flowery woods, and the resounding sea, had all vanished ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... while Freddy held the torch nearer. A vulture with outstretched wings, the ancient emblem of divine protection, cut out of flat gold, sat upon the forehead of the mummy. Its left claw had slipped into the empty eye-socket. A row of long white teeth gaped threateningly up to the roof. The lips had dried and withered until they ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... growing to be the rival of the stately house of Austria! No, no! Never shall the day dawn when Austria descends to an equality with Prussia! We are natural enemies; we can no more call the Brandenburgs brothers than the eagle can claim kindred with the vulture! You are right, count; the strife of the battle-field is over, let us gird ourselves for that of diplomacy. Let us be wary and watchful; not only the state but the holy church is in danger. I can no longer allow this prince of infidels to propagate ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... its crest, a few dry and blackened stumps and withered bushes showed where a little vegetation had once existed, and from near them rose the smoke. There was, however, no sign of life; and not a sound broke the awful silence of the desert, as we breasted the rise. Then a vulture flapped lazily up in front of us, and another and another and a tiger- wolf (hyena) lurched its gorged and ungainly ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the empty dignity of dominion over mountains ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... on the undeserving and the worthless—assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of Lucre, I will do anything, be anything—but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with an idea that she should never behold Oswald again; that he would go away without bidding her adieu. She expected every instant to receive the news of his departure, and this fear so increased the agony of her feelings that she felt herself all of a sudden seized by passion, that vulture beneath whose talons happiness and independence sink. Unable to endure the house that Lord Nelville no longer visited, she frequently wandered in the gardens of Rome, hoping to meet with him. The hours so spent were the least insupportable, since they afforded ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... which it lived. I can only say that it seemed to be larger than a cow and had the strangest musky odor. I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to the shelter of the rocks one day—a great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with a chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the great creature, twelve feet ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the deadly emaciation, and the hideous contractions of their limbs; lame men showed him their club feet; women with cancer, holding their bosoms with both hands, uncovered before him their breasts devoured by the invisible vulture. Dropsical women, swollen like wine skins were placed on the ground before him. He blessed them. Nubians, afflicted with elephantiasis, advanced with heavy steps and looked at him with streaming eyes and expressionless countenances. He made the sign of the cross over ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... "I am no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!" he smiled. "I do not eat carrion!" He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome of self-satisfied amusement. His horse blocked the way again, and all ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold, subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely Louis; the still unconquered ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from the goose's back he noticed something quite close to him that looked like a jagged stone. But almost at once he saw that it was a big vulture which had chosen the rock island for a night harbour. Before the boy had time to wonder at the geese recklessly alighting so near a dangerous enemy, the bird flew up to them and the boy recognized Gorgo, ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... house may lick the grindstone for a meal; his stomach is a bottomless pit; he eats so immoderately that he dies from wind. He will beg with a lakh of rupees in his pocket, and a silver begging-bowl in his hand. In his greed for funeral fees he spies out corpses like a vulture, and rejoices in the misfortunes of his clients. A village with a Brahman in it is like a tank full of crabs; to have him as a neighbor is worse than leprosy; if a snake has to be killed the Brahman should be set to do it, for no one will miss him. If circumstances compel you to perjure ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... strike thee dead for this deceit, immediate lightning blast thee, me, and the whole world! Oh! I could rack myself, play the vulture to my own heart, and gnaw it piecemeal, for not boding to me ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... mortal, then some day there would be a Last Man. And after the Last Man, what? He would die, and then all that any of the other stars could view of the vast panorama of our earthly generations would be an unburied corpse, with not even a vulture hovering to pick it to ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... still lay on the remnants of the prostrate western wall. So as Costobarus' gaze wandered he did not see far above that heap of striped garments in his garden walk, fixed like an enchanted thing, moveless, dead-calm, a great desert vulture poised in air. Presently another and yet another materialized out of the blue, growing larger as they fell down to the level of their fellow. Slowly the three swooped down over the heap on the garden walk. The tiny black shapes that beaded the yard-arms in port spread great wings and soared ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... two persons from Singe, taxed them with their guilt. They were obliged to confess, and insisted upon it that Seriff Sahib had sent them, &c. Many urged me to put these Dyaks to death; but the reluctance we all have to shedding blood withheld me, and I had no desire to strike at a wren when a foul vulture was at hand. I dismissed the emissaries scot-free, and then both Muda Hassim and myself indited letters to Seriff Sahib, that of Muda Hassim being severe but dignified. Before they were dispatched, an ambassador arrived from Singe with letters both to the rajah and myself, disclaiming warmly ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... a Vulture, and the Vulture, looking hungrily at the tender morsel before him, said, "Lambikin! ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... falcon, rarely indulging in his favorite amusement. He preferred to wander along the borders of the magnificent Lake of Constance, or to loiter among the neighboring hills, and watch, from some bare peak, the broad-winged vulture sailing slowly and steadily through the skies. He would watch it until it became a mere speck in the blue distance: we may often catch ourselves gazing after receding objects as though they were bearing away a thought we had fixed upon them. His wound ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... viziti. vocabulary : vortaro. voice : vocxo. void : eljxeti, nuligi. volcano : vulkano. volley : salvo. volume : volumo; volumeno, amplekso. voluntary : memvola, propravola. voluptuous : volupta. vote : vocxdoni. vow : solene promesi, dedicxi. vowel : vokalo. vulgar : vulgara. vulture : vulturo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... fortified gates into the open desert, strewn with tumbled fragments of the glory that was Rajasthan. There, where courtiers had intrigued and flattered, crows held conference. On the crumbling arch of a doorway, that opened into emptiness, a vulture brooded, heavy with feeding on those who had died for lack of food. Knee-deep in the Man Sagar Lake, grey cranes sought their meat from God; every tint and curve of them repeated in the quiet water. And there, beside a ruined shrine, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... most of power, and seem capable of most quick and joyous sensation. Hence we find gradations of beauty from the apparent impenetrableness of hide and slow motion of the elephant and rhinoceros, from the foul occupation of the vulture, from the earthy struggling of the worm, to the brilliancy of the butterfly, the buoyancy of the lark, the swiftness of the fawn and the horse, the fair and kingly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... murdered. His mind recoiled upon itself, and the very marrow in his bones crept at the thought. He flung himself upon his pallet, and for the hundredth time strove to sleep. Black despair had eaten down into his very heart's core, and remorse, like an old vulture, gnawed at his vitals; yet for a few brief, agonizing moments he slept, but only as the fiends of hell might be supposed to sleep. A dream, a series of change and torture, bewildering and terrible, came, like ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... died away. Swallowing it with considerable difficulty, the harmony was taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes. Then the pair talked together in the usual trogon fashion, and the sudden shadow of a passing vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as both birds swooped from sight to avoid the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... that Paragot should have been guilty of it I would not have believed had the accusation come from Joanna's own lips. The confounded scrap of paper, however, was proof. Therein he had pledged himself to give up Joanna for ten thousand pounds, and the scaly-headed vulture had paid the money. I turned away sadly and went to help the nurse ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the action to his words, and strode off in time to intercept Perkins, who had the scent of a vulture for a battle. "We have arranged the affair for the present," said the young officer curtly, "and won't need any graves to-day. Keep mum ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the villages, more than two hundred in number, which had taken part in the insurrection. The devastation that ensued was worthy of the most barbarous time. Neither age nor sex was spared. All the young were carried off to the vulture-nests of the Spahis of the Balkan. In vain did Redschid Pacha enjoin milder measures; neither he nor the Sultan could check these bloodthirsty tigers. There needed to that end the unexpected arrival of Omer Pacha at Nish. He fell among them like ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... the sky, alights on the top of her head-dress, from which he scatters the blue powder. His plumage, of orange colour, seems composed of metallic scales. His dainty head, adorned with a silver tuft, exhibits a human visage. He has four wings, a vulture's claws, and an immense peacock's tail, which he displays in a ring behind him. He seizes in his beak the Queen's parasol, staggers a little before he finds his equilibrium, then erects all his feathers, and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... are observed undermined, the trees gradually giving way, and falling into the stream. Cattle, horses, bears, and deer are seen at times attempting to swim across the impetuous mass of foaming and boiling water; whilst, here and there, a vulture or an eagle is observed perched on a bloated carcass, tearing it up in pieces, as regardless of the flood, as on former occasions it would have been of the numerous sawyers and planters with which the surface of the river is covered ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... living light, to be sure, but without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though the latter was great at all times—a decided brute and villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... here record that, accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of guano and fossil bone pits, securing some large dragon's teeth, and with them sundry flint ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... denote Hephaestos (Ptah,) they delineate a scarabaeus and a vulture, and to denote Athena (Neith,) a ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... the vulture out," continued the first speaker; "why, our poor friend and servant, man. And do you desire to ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... A well-fed cougar will creep upon and secure only about one in seven of the deer, elk, antelope or mountain sheep that he stalks. But a starving cougar is another animal. He creeps like a snake, is as sure on the scent as a vulture, makes no more noise than a shadow, and he hides behind a stone or bush that would scarcely conceal a rabbit. Then he springs with terrific force, and intensity of purpose, and seldom fails to reach his victim, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... hands and feet of the criminal, the clotted blood which had distilled from his wounds, and the sinews that had held him suspended. She pounces upon the body of the dead in the battle-field, anticipating the vulture and the beast of prey; but she does not divide the limbs with a knife, nor tear them asunder with her hands: she watches the approach of the wolf, that she may wrench the morsels from his hungry jaws. Nor does the thought of murder deter her, if her rites require the living blood, first spurting ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... wind moans among the trees as if it lamented the general desolation. If he strolls out in his grounds, the squirrel ascends the highest tree and chatters and scolds at the unusual intrusion, while the birds fly away screaming with affright, as if pursued by a vulture. They used to be tame once, when the family inhabited the house, and listen with wonder at notes sweeter and more musical than their own. They would even feed from the hand that protected them. His dog alone ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the bird book, settled comfortably on a bench, and with a deep sigh of satisfaction turned to the section headed. "V." Past "veery" and "vireo" he went, down the line until his finger, trembling with eagerness, stopped at "vulture." ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him, and he bent his head to kiss her, but Stephanie tore her roughly from his arms. The woman showed the strength of a man, and her vulture-like face was working fiercely ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Switzerland. Although not so powerful as the great vulture, which also inhabits the lofty mountains, they are bolder and more enduring. For hours the golden eagle will soar in the air high above the mountain-tops, and move in wide-sweeping circles with a scarcely perceptible motion of its mighty wings. When on the hunt for prey, it is ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... god of wars! Hail, Carnage, queen of blood! And hail those muffled armaments— Thy fettered vulture brood! Their sable wings are laureled and Their necks are ribboned gay, And silken folds their ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... with his vulture, the Spartan boy with his decently concealed wolf! What of Lys d'Angely with an English ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... something unpleasant was about to happen in a certain locality, it might be almost anywhere, for the rheumatism was no longer confining itself to the right leg and the right arm, but rioted through all the man's limbs and about his back and shoulders. It went about like a vulture after food, alighting where it found prey to ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Observe but this ridiculous commenter; The soul 'to my device was in this distich: Thus oft, the base and ravenous multitude Survive, to share the spoils of fortitude. Which in this body I have figured here, A vulture— ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson |
