"Civet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worthless toys, because they were new. Fifteen days, or nearly that, did the Portuguese stay there trading, and immense was the variety of their visitors in that time. Most came on board simply from wonder and to stare at them, others to sell their cotton cloths, nets, gold rings, civet and furs, baboons and marmots, fruit and especially dates. Each canoe seemed to differ in its build and its crew from the last. The river, crowded with this light craft, was "like the Rhone, near Lyons," but the natives worked their boats like gondolas, standing, one rowing and another ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... about this terrible grimace, it gave me a great fright and I thought it was a most important thing,[15] but I warrant that you frightened even Schott's men,[16] you with your fierce look and your holiday hopping step. But it is very improper for such folk to smear themselves with civet. You want to become a real silk-tail and you think that, if only you manage to please the girls, the thing is done. If you were only as taking a fellow as I am, it would not provoke me so. You have so many loves that merely to pay each one a visit you would take a month or more ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... huge one, But clean and pure from spot or taint, Pure as any female saint— That within its tight-hoop'd gyre Has kept Jamaica's liquid fire; Or luscious Oriental rack, Or the strong glory of Cognac, Whose perfume far outscents the Civet, And all but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets called Sileni, were carefully preserved and kept many rich and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergreese, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates; for to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... reconciliation, Villa Dorta was burnt, after the kindly usage, and the fleet went prize hunting. Three Spanish ships from the Havannah were captured. The largest, of 400 tons, was laden with gold, cochineal, indigo, civet, musk, and ambergris, beside many valuable passengers. Enough of cochineal and indigo was taken 'to be used in this realm for many years,' according to an official report. Ralegh was its captor. He expressed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... from the civet cat, and "musk," from the queer little hornless musk deer, are secretions of glands. It has been suggested that the defenceless musk deer escapes many of its enemies by the similarity of its secretion ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... think that Mary Burton prizes these weary labyrinthine sentences—all hay and wool, like the monstrous swelling of trunk hose? Far better can I read in Master Lilly's books. Thinkest thou I came hither to smell civet? Nay—I love better the honest odor of cabbages in mine aunt's kitchen! And all this finery—this lace—this ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... distinct odours, and one kind (Pelobates fuscus, or the heel-clawed toad), common in Europe, but not British, is known locally as the garlic toad on account of its smell. There are amongst carnivorous mammals various smells allied to that of civet which are not so agreeable to man as that substance; for instance, the odour of the fox and of the badger, and yet more celebrated, the terrible, awe-inspiring smell of the fluid emitted in self-defence by the skunk from a sac in the hinder part of the body. Horses, cows, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... and I will speak better. But what is it in a bishop that is consecrated? Is it his body, or his mind? What can be understood by his body? Is it the whole mass? Imagine its contents! Holy? "An ounce of civet, good apothecary!" That mass itself is daily changing: is the new body, which the indulgence of gluttonous sensuality supplies, as holy as the old? If it be his mind that is consecrated, what is mind, but a succession of thoughts? By what magic are future thoughts consecrated? Has a bishop ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... lose a guest; but Emily made good her escape. Once well on her way to Banbrigg, she took in great breaths of free air, as if after a close and unwholesome atmosphere. She cried mentally for an ounce of civet. There was upon her, too, that uneasy sense of shame which is apt to possess a reticent nature when it has been compelled, or tempted, to some unwonted freedom of speech. Would it not have been better, she asked herself, to merely avoid the talk ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... language, thus 'tolibant' (Puttenham), 'tulipant' (Herbert's Travels), 'turribant' (Spenser), 'turbat', 'turbant', and at length 'turban'. We have also a few Turkish, such as 'chouse', 'janisary', 'odalisque', 'sash', 'tulip'{7}. Of 'civet'{8} and 'scimitar'{9} I believe it can only be asserted that they are Eastern. The following are Hindostanee, 'avatar', 'bungalow', 'calico', 'chintz', 'cowrie', 'lac', 'muslin', 'punch', 'rupee', 'toddy'. 'Tea', or 'tcha', as it was spelt at first, of course is Chinese, so ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Because I know this thoroughly, I say so little, and that little, as your correspondents think, who know nothing of me, and as you say, who might have known more of me, unpractically. Pardon me, I am no seller of plasters, nor of ounces of civet. The patient's sickness is his own fault, and only years of discipline will work it out of him. That is the only really "practical" saying that can be ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... and Trade. But his Collection contained little more than the prices of stocks, explanations of the modes of doing business in the City, puffs of new projects, and advertisements of books, quack medicines, chocolate, spa water, civet cats, surgeons wanting ships, valets wanting masters and ladies wanting husbands. If ever he printed any political news, he transcribed it from the Gazette. The Gazette was so partial and so meagre a chronicle of events that, though it had no competitors, it had but a small ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sea, and then floated to a shore many miles distant. That no actual land connection with, or very close approximation to, an Asiatic island has occurred in recent times, is sufficiently proved by the fact that no squirrel, pig, civet, or other widespread mammal of the Eastern hemisphere has been able ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... comb has wreathed those locks which amber yield: The gale has civet breathed, and amber ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Society were set before me with irresistible evidence of its truth, my feeling (call it my prejudice) would undergo no change whatever. No whit the less should I yawn over the next batch, and lay the narratives aside with—yes, with a sort of disgust. "An ounce of civet, good apothecary!" Why it should be so with me I cannot say. I am as indifferent to the facts or fancies of spiritualism as I am, for instance, to the latest mechanical application of electricity. Edisons ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of the hoemorrhoues is quite as true as that of the odoriferous hyena, and of the civet described ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... exhibited, despite the ravages of sorrow or illness, signs of quite unusual beauty. Her eyes were wide opened, and terror-stricken, the pupils contracted almost to vanishing point. She wore a magnificent cloak of civet fur wrapped tightly about her, and, as Leroux opened the door, she tottered past him into the lobby, glancing back over ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... latten; lead, tin, arms, artillery and ammunition; gold and silver thread, and most of the other articles sent to Spain. From Portugal, Antwerp received pearls and precious stones, gold, spices, to the value of above a million of crowns annually; drugs, amber, musk, civet, great quantities of ivory, aloes, rhubarb, cotton, China root, (then and even lately much used in medicine,) and many other rare and valuable Indian commodities, with which the greatest part of Europe is supplied from Antwerp; also, sugars from St. Thomas, under ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... very narrow strait. The introduction may have been very recent, as in a fertile and unoccupied island such an animal would multiply rapidly. The only other mammals obtained were an Eastern opossum, which Dr. Gray has described as Cuscus ornatus; the little flying opossum, Belideus ariel; a Civet cat, Viverra zebetha; and nice species of bats, most of the smaller ones being caught in the dusk with my butterfly net as they ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... but little to our purpose, only we thought, by all their discourse, that there were people to be found, of one sort or other, everywhere; that there were many great rivers, many lions and tigers, elephants, and furious wild cats (which in the end we found to be civet cats), ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates. For to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... half an hour in tying and retying my neckcloth en mode. My handkerchief smelt of lavender, and my hair of oil of thyme—my waistcoat of bergamot, and my inexpressibles of musk. I was a perfect civet for perfumery. My coat, cut in the jemmy fashion, I buttoned to suffocation; but 'pon honour, believe me, sir, no stays, and my shirt neck had been starched per order, to the consistence of tin. In short, to be brief, I found, or fancied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various |
