"Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shoulder, stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... door, and after waiting some time, Laurie thought he heard a gruff voice say, "To-who-to-who?" "Why doesn't he come and see instead of asking?" thought Laurie, but just then the door opened, and an old owl ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... obscured the faint light of the stars that struggled to peep through the nebulous masses. At another time the superstitious spirit of the girl would have shrunk from the noises of the wood, and found omens in the hoot of the owl, or the moaning of the wind as it sobbed fitfully through the trees. But now the screech of the night bird and the soughing of the wind fell upon deaf ears for she was so absorbed in the one idea of getting home that ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... papa, don't say a word till you have heard me. John was a capital gardener; he kept the green-house looking beautiful; and this Mike that we've got now, he's nothing but an apprentice, and stupid as an owl at that! He'll never do ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... simply recorded the variations of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. The trick is to introduce some word connected with the supposed crime in a list of words connected with something quite different, yet a list in which it occurs quite naturally. Thus I wrote 'heron' and 'eagle' and 'owl', and when I wrote 'falcon' he was tremendously agitated; and when I began to make an 'r' at the end of the word, that machine just bounded. Who else in this republic has any reason to jump at the name of a newly-arrived Englishman like Falconroy except the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... worthy of a slave and barbarian, and that now I am indifferent and take no heed of the dawn. When a man has not in him what is loftier and mightier than all external impressions a bad cold is really enough to upset his equilibrium and make him begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog howling in every sound. And all his pessimism or optimism with his thoughts great and small have at such times significance as symptoms and ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in the evening the guard was relieved. He had told Roger that he was to listen for the cry of an owl outside, twice repeated; and that upon hearing this, he would know that his friends were without. Roger listened anxiously for the password from his new guard; but as it did not come, he concluded that Cuitcatl had not been able to bribe him, and that he must himself overpower ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... performed this feat was not a little ingenious. Having noticed several bees about, he caught one, and with a little gum, attached to it a piece of down from a large owl that somebody had shot. Releasing the insect, it flew directly towards its nest, the unaccustomed burden with which it was laden serving not only to make it easily visible, but also impeding its flight sufficiently to admit of the boy following it. The next was at the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... at our desire, The little clamorous owl shall sit Through her still time; and we aspire To make a law (and know not it) Unto the life ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... to the 24th the Green Drake and Stone Fly, the Owl fly, the Barn fly, the purple Hackle, the purple Gold Hackle, the flesh Fly, the little flesh Fly, the Peacock fly, the Ant fly, the brown Gnat, the little black Gnat, the Green-Grasshopper, the Dun Grasshopper, the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite. "Will there be ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... first watch, then," said Shirley. "I'm such a night owl anyway, that I won't mind staying awake. Joy and I can watch until two o'clock, then we'll ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... mist, with the snow high-pil'd, In the Winter night, in the forest wild, I heard the wolves with their ravenous howl, I heard the screaming note of the owl: ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... hoot of a distant owl was heard. One of the men holding the rope dropped it, and shivered from head ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... habits. Work without hope of profits! That cannot be, for it would be self-destruction. He would like to, perhaps; he has not the courage. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. The retired proprietor is really the owl of the fable gathering beech-nuts for its mutilated mice until it is ready to devour them. Is society also to be blamed for these effects of a passion so long, so ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... in cogibundity of cogitation.' The terrace terminated at the south-western tower, which, as we have said, was ruinous and full of owls. Here would Scythrop take his evening seat, on a fallen fragment of mossy stone, with his back resting against the ruined wall,—a thick canopy of ivy, with an owl in it, over his head,—and the Sorrows of Werter in his hand. He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... and the originators (it was soon found out that the poem had proceeded from our clique) were severely censured; for nothing of the sort had been seen since Cronegk's and Rost's attacks upon Gottsched. We had besides already secluded ourselves, and now found ourselves quite in the case of the owl with respect to the other birds. In Dresden, too, they did not like the affair; and it had for us serious, if not unpleasant, consequences. For some time, already, Count Lindenau had not been quite satisfied with his son's tutor. For although the young man was by no means neglected, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... assumed the expression of an owl named Solomon, there was a smile in her eyes, and Patty well knew that her stepmother's views agreed with her own, rather than ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... side:—(1) (DEAN) angel with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion versus griffin; (4) griffin devouring human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... curious coincidence that the obsolete chuet or chewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw.[30] It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince Hal applies the name to Falstaff (1 Henry IV., v. 1). It comes from Fr. chouette, screech-owl, which formerly meant also "a chough, daw, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... there were sounds to be heard all around them, but "familiarity breeds contempt," and from Max down they were all accustomed to hearing similar noises whenever they spent nights in the open. The owl would whinny or hoot according to his species; the loon send forth his agonizing and weird shriek from some distant lake; a fox might bark sharply and fretfully, or two quarrelsome 'coons dispute over a bit of food they had discovered—all this went with the camping ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... barn owl flapped lazily past, hooting weirdly as it went; then all nature became still again, save the dull sound of the tumbling flood. Ambler Jevons, had he been with me, would, no doubt, have acted differently. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... warrior, with his nerves of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread Progress, thinkest thou that this weak woman—from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the color—could brave one glance of—Away! the very thought of such sights for her makes ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been uninhabited, and the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... wilderness and possessing much knowledge of wood-ranging, heard only the coarser sounds. Therefore he lay half dreaming for some moments after the Indian raised his head and lent an attentive ear to some noise which came from far away. The night-owl's hoot was intermittent; a lone wolf howled mournfully on the hillside; in the swamp a catamount screamed as it pounced upon its prey. But it was none of these sounds which had attracted the Indian's attention. Enoch suddenly roused to see Crow Wing ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... was mightily comforted by the doctor's visit, but nex' mornin' things looked purty gloomy ag'in. That little foot seemed a heap worse, an' he was sort o' flushed an' feverish, an' wife she thought she heard a owl hoot, an' Rover made a mighty funny gurgly sound in his th'oat like ez ef he had bad news to tell us, but didn't have the ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... by the putrid leaves, may impart its poison through the medium of the air in exhalations; and I have known European officers, who were never conscious of having drunk either of the waters above described, take the fever (owl) in the month of May in the Tarae, and in a few hours become raving mad. These tainted waters may possibly act in both ways—directly, and through the medium ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... traveller passes on the right as he leaves Warren summit. Between Owl's Head and Moosilauke there is a deep valley through which winds a road leading from Warren to Benton and Dansville, affording a lonely but pleasant route through ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... owl of death, Our nation's terror and their bloody scourge! The period of thy tyranny approacheth. On us thou canst not enter but by death; For, I protest, we are well fortified And strong enough to issue out and fight: If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed, Stands with the ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... out a beau; From her own head Megaera[1] takes A periwig of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... very still in the forest. And when Tommy Fox suddenly heard a cry of "Whoo—whoo—whoo!" he jumped, in spite of himself. Tommy knew, right away, that it was only Mr. Owl. And he felt very sheepish. And then all at once Tommy jumped again. This time he was terribly frightened, for the strangest thing happened. The snow rose right up beneath his feet, and flew in his face. And something struck him a good, hard blow under ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... by a woodman fell'd, Which ancient, huge, and hollow tree An owl had for his palace held— A bird the Fates had kept in fee, Interpreter to such as we. Within the caverns of the pine, With other tenants of that mine, Were found full many footless mice, But well provision'd, fat, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her Majesty, "must kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly boots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep." Then they ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... talking faster than they think, and the other, by holding their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smatterer acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark, which I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... eve come slowly down, The woods are wrapt in deeper brown, The owl awakens from her dell, The fox is heard upon the fell; Enough remains of glimmering light 5 To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... "An owl!" murmured Dick. Then he was glad he had not shot first, as he had intended. He would only have awakened the others and been laughed at for his pains. Sometimes, he reflected, it was better to hold your fire, even in the west, that region of ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... owl! To go and risk her good name thus. However, thank Heaven she has played this prank with an honest lad that will ne'er expose her folly. But oh, the perverseness! Could she not bestow her nauseousness on thee?" Denys sighed and shrugged. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... endless time, the long dusty road was desolate of any travellers except this pair of runaways. Sometimes a coyote yelped in the distance; occasionally some creeping thing barred the track before them; and a screech owl sent its blood-curdling cries into their ears. Otherwise they were alone in the wilderness and the night, and beyond speaking distance ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers—was found by the present writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise to ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... guide upon the ground to recover his breath, and point out what was next to be done. Nectabanus was both frightened and angry; but he had felt himself as completely in the power of the robust knight as an owl in the claws of an eagle, and therefore cared not to provoke him to any ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... to palpitate, beat. latrocinio larceny, theft. lavar to wash. lazo knot; bond. leal loyal, faithful. lealtad f. loyalty. leccion f. lesson. lectura reading. lecho bed. lechuza owl. leer to read. legar to bequeath. legitimo legitimate. legua league. legumbre f. vegetable. lejano distant. lejos far off. lengua tongue, language. lento slow, tardy. lenador woodcutter. leon m. lion. leona lioness. lepra leprosy. letania litany. letargo lethargy. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... weren't doing him any honor. That bow was not for him, but directed toward the Owl, the symbol of the Goddess embroidered on the breast of the white tunic. As an acolyte, after all, he rated just barely above a layman; he had no ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... bounded this clearing, and beyond the river stretched its high bank, covered with forest trees, the advanced lines, as it were, of the vast wilderness which lay behind. From out the depths of those woods rose the occasional shrieks of an owl, or other night bird, and at intervals the long dismal howl of a wild dog — the only carnivorous animal indigenous in that country. The air was balmy, but there was something in the mournful aspect of the scene that weighed upon the spirits, and made one feel inexpressibly lonely in the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... wooden shutters were tightly closed, and had it not been for the light which streamed through their crescentic openings the house would have been deemed deserted. The girl started nervously as a night-owl hooted ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... quiet and peace, Who would silence the gay "constant-screamer" and line the Thames banks with perlice; Who sneer about "'ARRY at 'Enley," and sniff about "cads on the course," As though it meant "Satan in Eden"? I'll 'owl at sich oafs till ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... sons, roped in as a prize-ring where selfish men struggle ignobly for sordid gains The children of the land fled from it sick with despair. Its deserted houses were full of all doleful things. Cormorants and the daughters of the owl lodged ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... is a serpent. Apollo is sometimes connected with the mouse. Along with these identifications of the gods with animals we may mention the animal emblems with which they are generally represented. The eagle is the bird of Zeus, the owl of Athene, the peacock of Hera, the dove of Aphrodite. In this connection we cannot help thinking of the sacred animals of the Egyptian nomes; and the question may be asked whether such animals must be taken to be in Greece also the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... fleering slavish parasite, In warping profit or a traitorous sleight, 20 Hoops round his rotten body with devotes, And pricks his descant face full of false notes; Praising with open throat, and oaths as foul As his false heart, the beauty of an owl; Kissing his skipping hand with charmed skips, That cannot leave, but leaps upon his lips Like a cock-sparrow, or a shameless quean Sharp at a red-lipp'd youth, and naught doth mean Of all his antic shows, but doth repair More tender fawns,[115] and takes ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... dare to go up to that old owl's-nest Upsala and tell its learned men that the Pope is not God and that he has nothing to ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... lady also had a word to say. Her eyes were like brown beads, and her nose very long, which gave her indeed a hawk-like appearance, somewhat unusual in a woman; but her gravity was rather that of the owl. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to be heard at night but glasses' clink, boys, Fall of greasy cards and counters' chink, boys; If he won't "declare," Nordahl he will swear Bentzen is stupid as an owl, boys. Bentzen cool, boys, Is not a fool, boys; "You're another!" quickly ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... clown Can never beat love's barriers down: 'Tis better to be like the owl, Comic because so grave a fowl. From him we well may take our cue— By him be ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... struck with an apoplexy of sense. Wisdom peeps through both thine eyes, like the unexpected apparition of a bed-ridden old woman at a garret window. Thou art the very owl of Minerva, and the little bill, that thou ever carriest with thee, is given thee for this purpose, to peck at man's frailty in the matter of repayment. Come, thou art in danger. I must have ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... my boy, and finish your supper. It was probably fancy, or maybe the hoot of an owl to its mate," said our jovial companion, Dick Buntin, who never allowed any matter to disturb him, if he could help it, while engaged in stowing ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's voices ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Luis may have thought of it, there's no telling. If you had watched him closely you would have seen the pupils of his eyes dilate, and then contract—just like those of a caged owl, when he becomes aware of a ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... Rome! my Country! City of the Soul! The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, Lone Mother of dead Empires! and control In their shut breasts their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see The cypress—hear the owl—and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and temples—Ye! Whose agonies are evils of a day— A world is at our feet as fragile ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... believe it, that he took everything away from me when I left him, and I have since heard that he raffled all my clothes at a wretched table d'hote where he used to take me to dine. He is wealthy enough, though, and yet with all his fortune he is as miserly as a clay fireball and as stupid as an owl. He would not allow me to drink wine without water, and made me fast on Fridays. Would you believe it, he wanted me to wear black stockings, because they did not want washing as often as white ones. You have no idea of it, he worried me nicely I can tell you. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... could speak the words which seemed to crowd behind the forehead and in the depths of the eyes, and the commonest sentence would be flashed on by this immortal light. And she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness was like that of some vast snowy owl; she wore a ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... a little owl," he always said. "One can hardly see her eyes. I should love her to come again, though," he added, for he was curious to see Cornelli when she was funny and ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a law which—for a while—has usurped the true moral order and reversed it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, whispering; and thereupon—what happens? A knocking on the door—a knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: "Here's a knocking ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... may have furnished the original for the olive-wreath so common on American coins. They were issued under the auspices of Athene, and bore upon the obverse the head of the goddess. The reverse regularly bore the owl and the olive-bough. These coins were familiarly called owls, just as we speak of eagles in our currency, and just as the English talked of angels and crosses in the time of Elizabeth. Aristophanes jocosely calls the Athenian pieces owls of Laurium, in allusion to the gold mines there, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c.; and then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her an idle young housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl blasted, &c. They that have their brains baited and their fancies distempered with the imaginations and apprehensions of witches, conjurers, and fairies, and all that lymphatic chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks: children, fools, women, cowards, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Malvolio, like an owl That hoots the sun rerisen where starlight sank, With German garters crossed athwart thy frank Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl, And boys responsive with reverberate howl Shrilled, hearing how ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... it was some figment conjured up by my excited brain. Then I ran swiftly forward in the direction where I had seen her, calling loudly upon her, but without reply. Again I called, and again no answer came back, save the melancholy wail of the owl. A second flash illuminated the landscape, and the moon burst out from behind its cloud. But I could not, though I climbed upon a knoll which overlooked the whole moor, see any sign of this strange midnight wanderer. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in de moonlight, De owl is set'n high up in de tree; De little stars am twinklin' wid a sof' light, De night seems only jes fu' you an' me. Thoo de trees de breezes am a-sighin', Breathin' out a sort o' lover's croon, Der's nobody lookin' or a-spyin', Nobody but ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann). (a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay). (b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... ears to the voice, and his eyes to the light, the promise in the text is that he "shall live." Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall have the light of LIFE. In him is light, and the light is the LIFE of men." But if the sinner, like the owl, closes his eyes to the light of truth, and his ears to the voice of the Lord, he will abide in death, and, like the owl, love darkness ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... daughter's faith, and accompanied them to service that morning very readily. Roger appeared in time to take Belle, as usual, but she found him so taciturn and preoccupied that she whispered to Mildred, "You've spoiled him for me. He sits staring like an owl in the sunlight, and seeing just about as much. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to make him so glum. I intend to have a dozen beaux, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... merely to give us what is statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. The owl of the goddess of Wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city of Rome and the new reign began. It was the fashion of early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... go down to the seashore, the waves lap my feet and murmur: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything." The wise owl that perches at night on our roof at Itzea calls to me: "Baroja, you will never amount to anything," and even the crows, winging their way across the sky, incessantly shout at me from above: "Baroja, you will never ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... she gave, though not so loud as a screech owl, and then she tottered, swayed, and lost her senses. If she'd fallen to the left no harm had overtook her; but to the right she fell and dropped unconscious, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... got one oncle," Annie-Many-Ponies spoke up unexpectedly from her favorite corner. "Big Medicine man. Maybe I write one letter, maybe Noisy-Owl he come, make plenty storm. Noisy-Owl, he got awful strong medicine ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... was in her hand, the lines went all ways but the right; her fairy was a grimy little object, whose second wing could never be put on; the ships were saucers; the kitten might have been the pig; the baby was an owl in an ivy-bush; and to look at the live baby in the cradle only puzzled her the more. Miss Fosbrook gave her real drawing lessons; but boxes, palings, and tumble-down sheds, done with a broad black pencil, did ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of monsters yet unnamed, The crow's ill-boding croak, the hollow moan Of wild winds wrestling with the restless sea, The wrathful bellow of the vanquished bull, The plaintive sobbing of the widowed dove, The envied owl's sad note, the wail of woe That rises from the dreary choir of Hell, Commingled in one sound, confusing sense, Let all these come to aid my soul's complaint, For pain like mine demands new ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to be as respectably kept an establishment as there was in the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny Wren, the greatest gossip of the neighbourhood, never found anything to criticise in its arrangements; and old Parson Too-whit, a venerable owl who inhabited a branch somewhat more exalted, as became his profession, was in the habit of saving himself much trouble in his parochial exhortations by telling his parishioners in short to "look ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is not in love with her, a prescription of a Mohani or love-charm given by the wise women is that she should kill an owl and serve some of its flesh to her husband as a charm. "It has not occurred," Mr. Kipling writes, "to the oriental jester to speak of a boiled owl in connection with intoxication, but when a husband is abjectly ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... in the air, The evening gnats; and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, clammy ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Arthur from above, "I'll be down in a second. Don't wait—I have found an owl's nest up here; and I'm going to collar a young 'un for each of us. Don't tell them. If Railsford asks where I am, tell him I'm walking home. You can go with him on the tandem. I'll be home as soon ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... about losing the Roma and getting canned by the boss," explained a fisherman who was passing by. "Boris is sorer than a boiled owl at being run on ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the Brown Owl (he was head of the Ministry of Wisdom). "They always go on strike if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... called the Frau's voice, "bring me my new jacket from behind the door." And as she took it into the warm room one of the women said, "She looks like an owl. Such children are ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... "dabbling" in a hundred different directions. Not content with athletics and hunting, the boy will want to collect stamps or birds' eggs, to make a motor-boat and learn telegraphy; to take photographs and try his hand at the cornet; to experiment in chemistry and stuff an owl. Not content with dancing, sewing and cooking, the girl will want to master several poets and make attempts at painting; she will want to become more proficient at the piano and do some singing; she will want her ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... origin, appeared in the heavens. Also, a short time before, a thunderbolt fell at Sirmium, accompanied with a terrific clap of thunder, and set fire to a portion of the palace and senate-house: and much about the same time an owl settled on the top of the royal baths at Sabaria, and pouring forth a funeral strain, withstood all the attempts to slay it with arrows or stones, however truly aimed, and though numbers of people shot ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... for more after he had had his wish. He stole upstairs after Miss Monro, who looked round reproachfully at him if even a nightingale sang, or an owl hooted in the trees outside the open windows, yet who paused to say herself, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... them in one age-long instant while he stood in horror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned, pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers—owl-eyes. They were naked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in the light of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And each one held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal—a lava tip like the one he had found projected and ended ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. Tell the grassy ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... chief magistrate. At the second fire stood two chiefs: one on the right, called the great Fox, and one on the left, called the little Fox: these were the war chiefs or generals. At the third fire stood two warriors, who were called respectively the Wolf and the Owl. And at the other fire, two others who were the Eagle and the Tortoise. These four last named were not chiefs but braves of distinction, who held honorable places in the council, and were persons of influence in peace and in war. ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... Poquette Carry Road, known to the legislature of its state as "The Rainy-Day Railroad," is even more indifferently located, for it twists for six miles, from water to water, through as tangled and lonely a wilderness as ever owl ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... ditches, now floundering through tracts of swamp, or climbing over huge prostrate logs. In my passage I startled the thousand denizens of the dank forest, who greeted me with their cries. The qua-bird screamed; the swamp-owl hooted; the bullfrog uttered his trumpet-note; and the hideous alligator, horribly bellowing from his gaunt jaws, crawled sulkily out of my way, at times appearing as if he would turn ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... awful natural stillness, (here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive has his conceal'd hut;) O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake, The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon, singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn, slender, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in that Virginia which, settled one hundred and twenty years before, was yet largely forest and stream, had weaned him, he thought, from sounds of the street, and yet to-night he missed them, and would have had the town again. When an owl hooted in the walnut-tree outside his window, and in the distance, as far away as the creek quarter, a dog howled, and the silence closed in again, he rose, and began to walk to and fro, slowly, thinking of the past and the future. The past had its ghosts,—not ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... grow weary of her life. For when she did sacrifice, the pure water would grow black and the wine be changed to blood. Also from the shrine of her husband, which was in the midst of her palace, was heard a voice calling her, and the owl cried aloud from the house-top. And in her dreams the cruel AEneas seemed to drive her before him; or she seemed to be going a long way with none to bear her company, and be seeking her own people in a land that was desert. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the rest of the day he hung about the shack, as solemn as an owl. And once in the night he got up and lighted the lamp and came over and studied my face. I blinked up at him sleepily, for I was dog-tired and had been dreaming that we were back in Paris at the ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... gone—" Well, sir," burst out Evans, "don't you see that the real murderer is not that stupid, ignorant owl, Hodges?" ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Plymouth to-night, along the short road, Caspian patched up but sulky as an owl. Luckily I didn't lose the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... 'skulls' and 'mandibles' of two genera, the 'Dinornis' and 'Palapteryx'; and of an extinct genus, 'Notornis', allied to the 'Rallidae'; and the mandibles of a species of 'Nestor', a genus of nocturnal owl-like parrots, of which only two living species ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... at once a rose-colored cat and a yellow owl. The cat was carved impressionistically in a series of circles. She was altogether celestial and comfortable. The owl might have ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... continued its silent work, weaving its blanket softer, deeper. The straggling pedestrians of early morning bent their heads into it and drove first paths through the immaculate mantle. The fronts of owl cars and cabs were coated with a sugary white rime. Broadway lay in a white lethargy that is ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... every boulder, and most things looked asleep except the rill that went on running. Only we and the rabbits, and the night moths and the beetles, seemed to be stirring. An occasional bat appeared and vanished like a spectral illusion, and I saw one owl flap across the moor with ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... but crown the altar of Joseph with asses' ears. Such foolish Munchausenisms give to young girls a false idea of the opposite sex, relax their vigilance and imperil their virtue. From such ridiculous romances, solemnly approved by an owl-like priesthood, sprung that false code—so insulting to womankind—that a wife's honor is not committed to her own keeping, but to the tender care of every man with whom she comes in contact. When a wife goes wrong a hypocritical world rises in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... best, as she sat on the arm of his chair and listened with tactful sympathy to his stories of the big black bass that kept house in the pool at the end of the lake, or of the downy woodpecker's nest in the old hickory, or, perhaps, of the big hoot owl that perched on the granary warm nights to watch for mice. It was with a certain feeling of sadness, as well as of pride, that she watched him grow older, lose his boyhood ways, and become more and more of a man—a ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... need ever so much honeysuckle; you know where it hangs thickest—in the Owl's Glen. Olympia will like to see that—the haunt of her favorite bird"; and the busy little maid laughed cheerily, like a disordered goddess, intoxicated by the exhaling odors ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... adventures of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf? Every nation has a congeries of such tales, and it is curious to mark how the same animal reappears with the same imputed physiognomy in all of them. The fox is always cunning, the wolf ravenous, the owl wise, and the ass foolish. The question has been raised whether such traits were at first actually ascribed to animals, or whether their introduction in story was intended merely as an agreeable figure of speech for classes of men. We cannot doubt but that the former was the case. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... that day, Simeon Fenellan, thinking of the many things which are nothing, and so melancholy for lack of amusements properly to follow Old Veuve, that he could ask himself whether he had not done a deed of night, to be blinking at his fellow-men like an owl all mad for the reveller's hoots and flights and mice and moony roundels behind his hypocritical judex air of moping composure, chanced on Mr. Carling, the solicitor, where Lincoln's Inn pumps lawyers into Fleet Street through the drain-pipe of Chancery Lane. He was in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I have done you? I shall soon make you both feel what you deserve." She said no more, but taking water in her hand, threw it in his face with these words, "Quit the form of man, and take that of an owl." These words were soon followed by the effect, and immediately she commanded one of her women to shut up the owl in a cage, and give him neither meat ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to see a owl cloce it has offle big eyes, and wen you come to feel it with your fingers, wich it bites, you fine it is mosely fethers, with only jus meat enuf to ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... of long-legged, unhealthy-looking sheep, who crashed through the bushes in wild terror as the riders swept by them. Their plaintive calls were the only sounds which broke the silence of the night, save the occasional dismal hooting of the veldt owl. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trembling heart as the sun went down behind the western hills. Slowly the hours dragged on, and many a time she stole out in the deep darkness to listen, but there was nothing to be heard save the distant cry of the night-owl, and she was about retracing her steps for the fifth time, when from behind a clump of rose-bushes started a little dusky form, which whispered ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... with a sad little smile. "Pardon me, mademoiselle. Even were you free of your trothplight—even were I free of my prison, most beautiful lady, I have naught to offer you yonder in that fair land of France. They tell me that the owl and the wolf hunt undisturbed where Arnaye once stood. My chateau is carpeted with furze and roofed with God's Heaven. That gives me a large estate—does it not?—but I may not reasonably ask a woman to share it. So ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the queerness of the whole business. Why should there be such a mystery about it? and why such care taken to maintain silence? He had just begun to ask himself these questions, and a horrible suspicion was forming itself in his mind, when he heard the hoot of an owl from the direction of the beach. Wondering at an owl being in so unlikely a place, he stooped to gather a fresh load of iron. But suddenly a man sprang out of the gloom, flashing a dark lantern full upon him. Blinded by the light, he staggered back. Then a revolver in the man's hand went off ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... "Good evening, Mister Owl!" Bandy-legs called out, with mock respect. "Hope all the little Owls are feeling quite well to-night. Glad to have us for company, are you? Well, we're just tickled to death to be with you, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... said: "So let it be and may it mean so; for never come you here but to stir in me anger or mourning. Ever were you the screech owl or the Osprey that boded ill when you spoke of Tristan; what ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... sober old Helen," she said, "you'll be an owl for a thousand years after you die! Why can't you caper a little? You don't ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... I thought it must be breakin' out in blisters. 'Never see anybody that looked just like me, did you, Sis?' I says to her, when I couldn't stand it any longer. 'No, sir,' she says, solemn as an owl. She was right out and honest, I'll say that for her. That's the only time Marcellus laughed while we was inside that house. I didn't blame him much. Ho, ho! Well, he ain't laughin' now and neither are we—or we hadn't ought to be. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rewards you wot not of; and I am of the mould as of the race of those whose swords have conquered thrones. For the rest, your news of the alliance of Louis of Hungary with your Tribune makes it necessary for the friend of Louis to withdraw from all feud with Rome. Ere the week expire, the owl and the bat may seek refuge in ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... paid the scot. Towards midnight Sergeant Inch had so far forgot his rancour as to strike up his song of Robin and the Night Owl—'Robin,' I should explain, being the Earl of Essex, and the 'Night Owl' our own general, so nicknamed for his activities ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... nameless sorrowing look So often thought a whim? God-willed, the willow shades the brook, The gray owl sings a hymn; ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... John Jay to his senses. He crawled along the aisle and out of the door, blinkling like an owl as he came into the blinding sunshine. Many experiences had convinced him that he was born under an unlucky star. When he went leaping down the hill to the log where he had left his basket, it was with the ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: "Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... good as a gift, though, with the cards you held," said Mr. Whitmore, and I heard the coins jingle in changing hands, when from the shrubbery, where the gravel sweep narrowed, there sounded the low hoot of an owl. Being town-bred and unused to owls, I took it for a human cry in the darkness and shrank closer against my ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... toward woodpeckers, bluebirds and their like, the mahogany-like dense heart-wood rots, leaving hollow passages in the trunk and larger limbs, and often in the smaller ones, too. Here are homes for all who seek complete seclusion from storms and enemies. The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... time which is reasonably valuable to me, however lightly you may regard it, by telling me now about slim men who eat more than you do and yet keep their figures. The woods are full of them; also the owl wagons. The difference between such men as those you have described and such men as you is that they were made to be thin men and to keep on being thin men regardless of their food consumption, and that your sort are naturally predisposed ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... "Owl that I am!" said King Prigio to himself. "I might have better wished for a complete set of sham fairy things which would not work. It would have saved a great deal of trouble; but I am so much out of the habit of using the cap, that I never thought of it. However, what ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... down the great stair, "the Corridors of Time," where the white owl glared his glassy wisdom on the passings and counter-passings, she was haunted with the thought that Harry had seen the extraordinary Kerr before; not shaken hands with him, perhaps—perhaps not even heard his name; but somewhere, across some distance, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... York City, the sort of places that get themselves called "quaint." No one else manages the affairs of young lovers (on paper) with quite so much of the airy spirit of young love. I can think of no one else who could write such a scene as that in The Owl Taxi, where the dead-wagon, on its way in the night to the vast cemetery in a New York suburb, is held up for the removal of a much-needed corpse. Such material is bizarre. The handling of it must be very deft or the result will be revolting; and yet the thing can be done. In the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... small wood covers for music and blotting cases, painted by hand, are rather pretty favors. The plain boxes and book covers can be bought and ornamented by the young artists of the family. Nothing is prettier than an owl sitting on an ivy vine for one of these. The owl, indeed, plays a very conspicuous part at the modern dinner-table and luncheon. His power of looking wise and being foolish at the same time fits him for modern society. He enters it as a pepper-caster, a feathered ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... eagles circling about the summit of a lofty tower. I soon became satisfied that there was a nest. Now, in all my collection, I lacked eggs of the native eagle and the large owl. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... grandmother, "we will stay there long enough to get well rested and enjoy ourselves; but when the sun goes down and it grows dark, then we will go. Then all the little birds are silent in the trees and the old night-owl begins to hoot." ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... 3 An owl is a bird with a disagreeable scream, instead of a beautiful note; but the mulberries grown about the college would make them sing delightfully. And so would the influence of L, going forth from the college, transform the nature of the tribes ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... yonder ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... early English poems on secular subjects are also worthy of mention, among others, The Owl and the Nightingale, generally assigned to the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272), an Estrif, {26} or dispute, in which the owl represents the ascetic and the nightingale the aesthetic view of life. The debate is conducted with much animation and a spirited use of proverbial wisdom. The Land of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of the night he was brought leaping to his feet by a cry out of the dark: a cry that was neither from wolf, coyote, nor screech-owl. Wakened from a deep sleep, his consciousness was aware only of something dreadful. Outside the tent Mary ran to him: her teeth were chattering with terror: she could not speak. Clare crept from her tent. Both women instinctively drew ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... he could only lie still, his teeth chattering, his hair standing up on his head. "Who's that?" exclaimed the terrible voice once more, and then he saw a big black shape drop down from the tree above and settle on a dead branch a few feet above his hiding-place. It was a bird—a great owl, for now he could see it, sharply outlined against the clear starry sky; and the bird had seen and was peering curiously at him. And now all his fear was gone, for he could not be afraid of an owl; he had been accustomed ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... wind went "Yooooooo!" And the raven croaked in the tangled tarn— When, with a wail, the screech-owl flew Out of her lair in the haunted barn— There came three burglars down the road— Three burglars skilled in arts of sin, And they cried: "What's this? Aha! Oho!" And straightway ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... Whenever his back hair has grown so long that it is liable to impede his movements, a posse of grooms is despatched to his lair to rope, throw and shear him with horse-clippers. Last time they did it they swear they lost the instrument twice and that two bats and an owl flew out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... an answer. At last the door was flung open and the pleasantest-faced old gentleman it would be possible to find anywhere, with round pink cheeks, merry eyes, a snowy white upturned moustache and white hair to match, peering through big gold-rimmed spectacles like a cheerful night-owl, stood in the doorway. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... great Minerva chose the Owl, That bird of solemn phiz, That truly awful-looking fowl, To represent her wis- Dom, little recked the goddess of The time when she would howl To see a Peanut set on end, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... "Hooty the Owl didn't get one of us that time," said Old Mr. Toad to his nearest neighbor with a chuckle of satisfaction. Then he swelled out his music bag and began to sing again. And at once, as abruptly as it had stopped, the great chorus began again as joyous as before, for nothing had happened to bring sadness ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... yell right out in the night, like a hoot owl only fiercer!" insisted one of her followers. "And she ain't safe to be loose with a habit ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... dark like an owl," sang back Eleanor, her good-humor restored the instant her paddle touched water,—for boating ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... jealous. Anyhow, Solomon Owl declared that there was still another reason why Benjamin did not like Freddie Firefly. Solomon claimed that Benjamin would have liked to EAT Freddie. But he didn't quite dare to grab him for fear of getting ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... thick purple carpet under the amber light, all too brilliant for her. She had come from a world of darkness, owl-like she must blink before the blaze. Some one came forward to her, some one so kind and comforting, so easy and unsurprised that Maggie suddenly felt herself steadied as though a friend had put an arm around her. Before ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole |
